Twitter’s new CEO has been in power for a full day and he’s already made a major change to the company policy.

Beginning today, we will not allow the sharing of private media, such as images or videos of private individuals without their consent. Publishing people’s private info is also prohibited under the policy, as is threatening or incentivizing others to do so.

The first question that comes to mind in our industry is, what does this new policy mean for porn?

Turns out, not much. Instead, this policy is more about people using or threatening to use photos to harass, intimidate, and reveal the identities of people, mostly women, activities, and other minorities. In other words, you can’t say if you don’t do what I want I’ll post something you said or did on Twitter.

I’m not sure why this wasn’t always their policy but I’m glad to see that is in fact now being changed.

Here are the specific list of things you can’t post under the new policy.

• 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.
• media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted.

The following behaviors are also not permitted:

• 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.

What is not a violation of this policy?

The following are not in violation of this policy:

• people sharing their own private information;
• sharing information that is publicly available elsewhere, in a non-abusive manner; and
• sharing information that we don’t consider to be private, including:
  • name;
  • birthdate or age;
  • place of education or employment;
  • location information related to commercial property or places of business, where this information is publicly available;
  • descriptions of physical appearance;
  • gossip, rumours, accusations, and allegations; and
  • screenshots of text messages or messages from other platforms (unless they contain private information e.g., phone number).

For media, the following are not in violation of our policy:

• the media is publicly available or is being covered by mainstream media;
• the media and the accompanying tweet text add value to the public discourse or are shared in public interest;
• contains eyewitness accounts or on the ground reports from developing events;
• the subject of the media is a public figure.

So while this doesn’t mean that the new CEO of Twitter won’t still make policy changes about adult content, at least for now that isn’t the case. This new policy is more about protecting people from harassing and bullying people through the Twitter platform.

Should we be worried? Probably. This is a man who once said this …

The former CEO Jack Dorsey was one of the few mainstream CEOs that truly cared about free speech and wouldn’t censor adult content.

But now? Well, that isn’t the case. The new CEO can do what he wants. He is in charge after all.  He was born in Mumbai, India, a country that has historically been very very anti-porn. In fact, many sex-related topics, such as pornography, are considered taboo in traditional Indian households.

So it will be hard to say what the future holds as far as Twitter and the adult industry are considered. For now, all we can do is hope for the best.