Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey steps down, and company announces new rules against doxxing

The CEO and founder of Twitter has stepped down. Jack Dorsey is going to focus on another business he founded, the digital payment company Square, and Twitter will be led by Parag Agrawal, a board member and the former chief technology office. Dorsey remain on the board of directors until the 2022 stockholder meeting.

On Tuesday, the company also announced a tightening of its policy against doxxing, or the sharing of private information without permission. It will no longer allow sharing of personal media such as photos and videos on its platform without the consent of the person shown in the media.

Twitter already has a privacy policy that prohibits spreading people’s private information around, such as addresses, phone numbers and other identifiers.

“There are growing concerns about the misuse of media and information that is not available elsewhere online as a tool to harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of individuals. Sharing personal media, such as images or videos, can potentially violate a person’s privacy, and may lead to emotional or physical harm. The misuse of private media can affect everyone, but can have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities. When we receive a report that a Tweet contains unauthorized private media, we will now take action in line with our range of enforcement options,” the company said in a release.

“While our existing policies and Twitter Rules cover explicit instances of abusive behavior, this update will allow us to take action on media that is shared without any explicit abusive content, provided it’s posted without the consent of the person depicted. This is a part of our ongoing work to align our safety policies with human rights standards, and it will be enforced globally starting today,” the company said.

How it will police this policy is another matter. On average, there are about 500 million tweet messages sent every day on the platform.

As of today, users won’t be able to share on Twitter the following types of private information or media, without the permission of the person who it belongs to:

• home address or physical location information, including street addresses, GPS coordinates or other identifying information related to locations that are considered private;
• identity documents, including government-issued IDs and social security or other national identity numbers – note: we may make limited exceptions in regions where this information is not considered to be private;
• contact information, including non-public personal phone numbers or email addresses; 
• financial account information, including bank account and credit card details; and
• other private information, including biometric data or medical records.
• NEW: media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted. 
   

The following are also not allowed: 

• threatening to publicly expose someone’s private information;
• sharing information that would enable individuals to hack or gain access to someone’s private information without their consent,e.g., sharing sign-in credentials for online banking services;
• asking for or offering a bounty or financial reward in exchange for posting someone’s private information;
• asking for a bounty or financial reward in exchange for not posting someone’s private information, sometimes referred to as blackmail.

Learn more about reporting on Twitter.