This is genuinely fascinating:
Twitter Inc. said users will no longer be able to share private media, such as photos and videos, of another person without their permission, a move aimed at improving privacy and security.
This doesn't mean you can't post a picture of your lunchtime buddies, but it does mean that if one of your buddies complains then the picture will be taken down.
In one sense, this strikes me as going way too far. There's a sense among some people already that it's generally illegal to post a picture of a private citizen without permission. This is entirely untrue, especially of pictures taken in public places. Twitter's action is going to convince ever more people that they have a right to privacy in their public actions.
On the other hand, Twitter is such a transitory medium that it hardly matters. At a minimum it will take days or weeks for a person to discover that their picture has been posted to Twitter and to then get Twitter to remove it. By that time, who cares? Most tweets get attention for about 15 minutes and then rapidly deposit themselves in the ash heap of history. The ones that stay relevant longer tend to involve celebrities or politicians and are exempt from the policy.
More than likely, the only significant result of this will be a big increase in Twitter's policing team. No wonder their stock went down on the news. And no wonder that Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO yesterday.
Having lunch in your workplace is not a public place. There are already laws against things like upskirts in public places. Besides control of your image is an IP thing when companies use it to sell stuff without your knowledge.
In short the area is gray.
Everyone can claim they are in witness protection.
Seems like an odd PR move for whatever reason. So, when I complain to Twitter admins about a picture, do I wait weeks, months, or years for it to be removed? And how many people do they have working on this? They can't even keep up with adequate moderation now.
Too early to say, but I think Twitter is trying to lower the temperature on their platform, a move that I applaud.
Yes, more sedate and less interesting, but it's been a haven for a lot of anti-social types and perhaps they should go to a platform where they can amuse and fight among themselves, and which the press and politicians can ignore.
Will the GQP object to this ?
It actually is forbidden in most EU countries, waived only if the person photographed is a person of public interest like a celebrity, a politician, and so on. It's known as the right to your own image. This is to prevent commercial exploitation of peoples' images, keep people from becoming "internet famous" against their will, and so on.
These copyright laws were written before the Internet became a thing, and so they look at it from the point of view of print publication. Twitter is in the same boat as People Magazine, really.