tech2 News Staff

Micro-blogging site Twitter is taking serious measures against user abuse by introducing new rules that prohibit users from posting nude or sexual photos of other people, without their consent. These new rules have been added to the Twitter Rules page.

According to the new rules, users now cannot publish or post any intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject’s consent. Prior to this, the earlier rules mentioned that users cannot publish other people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their permission. If found guilty, Twitter will lock the user's account and hide all content which is reported as being in violation of the new policies.

The micro-blogging site added that the Trust and Safety team, which is in charge of these cases, will be online 24/7 to oversee these requests. For example, if a user finds a post offensive, they can send in a request to Twitter to pull it down. The company will then review the request and check if it the post is inappropriate.

Earlier, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was heavily scrutinised as he admitted that the site was awful when it comes to abuse and harassment. At that moment, he said that he has plans to change how Twitter deals with such users who are on Twitter just to violate and abuse others. Since then, the company has been struggling to slow growth of the user base.

Apart from Twitter, Reddit and Google were also seen taking a tougher stance against nudity and prevent their services from turning into online peep shows. Social-networking and news site Reddit had said that, it would remove photos, videos and links with explicit content, if the person in the image hasn't given permission for it to be posted.

Google, the Internet’s most powerful company, said that it would ban most nude photos and video from publicly accessible sites on its popular Blogger service. But within a few days of the announcement, Blogger reversed their porn policy after users thought it was unfair to suddenly change the policy.