New Twitter Tools Enhance Privacy Protection

Twitter announced an update to its abuse reporting functions that will allow its users to specify personal information issues.

“We want to move faster in reviewing reported Tweets that share personal information. Starting today, you’ll be able to tell us more about the Tweet you are reporting,” the company’s Twitter Safety account wrote on Thursday (March 7).

Last month, Twitter’s first-quarter sales forecast showed weak user growth as the company aims to improve its services. And while the stock has gained 4.8 percent since the start of 2019, it is still 37 percent below the multi-year high it reached last June, according to Bloomberg.

Twitter isn’t the only social media site looking to boost its privacy measures. Earlier this week Facebook announced that it will embrace “privacy-focused” communications via encryption services.

The social media giant has been under fire since it was revealed that the site was used to gather details on as many as 87 million users, and the data was then shared with Cambridge Analytica, a U.K. consulting firm that has since closed down.

“Today, we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories and small groups are by far the fastest-growing areas of online communication,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post, adding that “end-to-end” encryption will become a standard feature across the social media platform.

He explained that messages would last a short amount of time, spanning seconds or minutes. In addition, the company will not store “sensitive data” in countries that have weak track records on privacy or human rights.

“Upholding this principle may mean that our services will get blocked in some countries, or that we won’t be able to enter others anytime soon,” the CEO wrote. “That’s a tradeoff we’re willing to make. We do not believe storing people’s data in some countries is a secure enough foundation to build such important internet infrastructure on.”