Twitter Has Banned Posting Images Of People Without Consent – Why That’s A Good Thing

2 min read

Twitter recently announced that it would no longer allow “personal media sharing, such as individual individual images or videos without their consent”. This step applies through the expansion of personal information and social media platform media policies.
Practically, this means that photos and videos can be removed if the photographer has not received the approval of the person captured before sharing items on Twitter. Individuals who find their image shared online without approval can report posts, and Twitter will then decide whether to be lowered.

According to Twitter, this change received a response to “increasing concerns about media abuse and information that is not available elsewhere online as a tool for harassing, intimidating, and expressing individual identity”.

While the steps indicate a shift towards greater individual privacy protection, there are questions about the implementation and law enforcement.

Unlike some European countries – France, for example, has a strong privacy culture around image rights based on Article 9 of the French Criminal Code – England does not have a strong image rights tradition.

This means that there are few that individuals can do to prevent their self-circulating images freely freely, unless they are considered to have fallen in limited legal protection. For example, in a relevant state of an individual can be protected based on part 33 of the criminal justice and 2015 Act, which discussed image-based sexual harassment. Legal protection can also be available if the image is considered to violate the provisions of copyright or data protection.

On the one hand, the freedom to take pictures fiercely maintained, mostly by the media and photographers. In other photos, private, unwanted or embarrassing can cause upset and significant trouble, with clashes of rights between photographers (owner of legal photos) and photographed (often not claiming pictures).

My research
For my PhD, I surveyed 189 adults living in England and Wales in their experience with images distributed online, especially through social media. My findings were published earlier this year.

Although some participants were not disturbed or even happy to find their own pictures together, for others, finding pictures that they did not agree to posted made them feel uncomfortable. When one participant said:

Luckily I don’t look too bad and don’t do anything stupid, but I prefer to control my picture that appears in public.