So basically they just removed the ability for people to hold people in power accountable by making their mischievous acts known in public, while it is known that "proper, lawful" channels would not have worked due to conflict of interest..?
It's frustrating to see how tech is consistently unable to implement systematic yet fair solutions that are possible in law. Not that people aren't genuinely trying - but the nature of automation and the design of platforms just seem at odds with working privacy.<p>German law, for example, generally protects people's privacy (i.e. you are not allowed to take a photo of people without permission, even in public). But it implements fine-grained exceptions for people of national importance - either globally (i.e. politicians who remain so) or temporarily (i.e. you may take photographs of such people for a time but no longer when they have ceased to be famous).
If they really believed this they’d make it so any photo with any face must be approved before being shown by those in the photograph.<p>This is an intractable problem and just exists as another lever to arbitrarily punish people.
Is this a response to J.K. Rowling's concerns a few days ago? Three people supporting trans rights took a photo in the front of her house, showing the address, and published it on Twitter. In a Twitter thread published by Rowling, she mentions people reporting it to Twitter Support helped to get it removed [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462758324177444870</a> or backup: <a href="https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/ttfaddr/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rowlingindex.org/work/ttfaddr/</a>
I wonder if Twitter will begin to enforce this by requiring photos of people to be tagged, and the subject of the photos to "consent" to Twitter using their photos. If so, and if Twitter behaves like any other tech company in using manipulative tactics engineered to extract "consent", I can only see this ending badly for privacy.
Since we have not had in person conferences or tech meet ups for 2 years it will be interesting to see all the tweets about them in the future not having any of the usual photographs of the crowd, people in the corridors on laptops and participants in sessions, at social events.<p>I wonder what other behaviours we have forgotten that used to occur? No photos of people in a pub, at a cafe, on vacation. This might make Twitter a less appealing place for the average person.<p>Imagine if Facebook did this.
Why do we hold companies like Twitter in high regard? More so, why do we consider what is primarily a media company to be valued and considered as a technology company when in many regards it is more like the Washington Post or NY Times than it is like Google? I think the whole framing of Twitter as a tech company needs to be rethought and they need to be valued and considered in the same vein as media companies.
People always focus on the big hypotheticals with these kinds of features. The big potential abuses that could stifle speech and damage democracy.<p>I think it’s interesting to instead think about the number of individuals this might help. People being bullied, harassed, doxxed, etc. It could be life changing for them.
But Twitter, you haven't even fixed what's "Trending", specifically in the local context. For example, the word "Jane" is trending in your country, Jane is a well known politician who has probably said something interesting. You click the word to see whatsup...twitter returns some random posts that mention "Jane" probably basing on number of likes<p>This would be a nice ticket to fix...
Whether this was the CEO's first act of business or not, people should be genuinely scared of him. He doesn't give a fuck about the First Amendment and thinks it's his job to dictate what a healthy conversation is and who gets to participate [0]. People should be abandoning this company immediately, but the sad part is that many of its most active users agree with him ideologically. At least Jack gave the appearance of giving a fuck about free speech.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-stage-twitters-cto-on-misinformation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-s...</a>
"privacy".<p>Uh huh. This will be applied unevenly. Pics that violate this that support one political cause will be allowed, pics that violate this that support the opposite will be banned.
Wouldn't this be an actual ideal use case for facial recognition? Apple wanted to do CSAM before upload, Twitter could do consent-checking before posting.<p>Users might consider saying "I do not want my images being public" and can be prohibited before posting.<p>Taking it down <i>after</i> it's posted is useless, it'll be in caches all over the world and by that time, it's too late.<p>For example, every reddit post ever posted (or near enough) are scraped in real time (pushbullet, bigquery etc) so the take-downs need to happen before it hits public APIs.<p>I also think we need to enforce consent, and begin taking action against tech firms - if I did not consent and they allowed it to be published, they should be held to account. They need stronger measures to ensure consent was freely and fairly given.
So I guess we will see much more of this [0] and then it won't be a "mistake" but rather "protecting these peoples privacy!"<p>[0] <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-center-photos-at-border-was-a-mistake/" rel="nofollow">https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-ce...</a>
this is already being abused<p><a href="https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1465831941157052416" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1465831941157052416</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/NotToadMckinley/status/1466013348898693122" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/NotToadMckinley/status/14660133488986931...</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466155751328530437" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466155751328530437</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466218599626854404" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466218599626854404</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466232833815420930" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1466232833815420930</a>
Is it time to create new platforms that decentralize power? If we agree that some level of social digital connections are important, then why should corporations be in charge? Shouldn’t it be a democratic solution?
And so it begins. The degenerates already are using it to their advantage:<p><a href="https://ibb.co/yX61n4T" rel="nofollow">https://ibb.co/yX61n4T</a>
The one thing I see a lot on Twitter is people "retweeting" the wrong photo of the wrong person. I saw all sorts of people being pictured as that school shooter last week.<p>Whatever we think of this policy, anyone who tweets or re-tweets a photo of an uninvolved person in a breaking news case should be, by their policy, permanently banned (or shadowbanned).<p>(And also misinformation, like what Spike Lee did: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/spike-lee-reaches-settlement-for-tweeting-wrong-address-for-george-zimmerman/2012/03/30/gIQAGB6QlS_blog.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/spike-le...</a> )