Gory Photos of Death Are Going to Be Removed from Twitter

Twitter has said that it will remove images and videos of dead people as long as immediate family members request it.

Any photos “from when critical injury occurs to the moments before or after death” will be considered for removal as long as there is a request from a family member. However, Twitter said that they will take into account public interest of any content and said that they may not comply with all requests.

This action may have been triggered by the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Shortly after the beheading, video footage and images were spreading over the internet and the White House contacted social networks to ask for them to remove the media. Although Twitter are under no legal obligation to remove these images or videos, it seems that they are willing to help stop them spreading. Twitter declined to say whether they received a request from Mr Foley’s family or if it was just the request from the White.

Andrew McLaughlin, Googles former public policy chief, doesn’t agree with the removal of the images and says that they could have important news value. He told the Washington Post:

“You can imagine that if you’re a family member of this person, by all means you would want the horrific photos of their moment of death taken offline. But … the photos are obviously newsworthy.” “It’s awful that these photos were taken, and it’s awful that this moment happened, but their very existence is news.

It has been mentioned that a simple “graphic warning” label might be better than full censorship of the media. Twitter has not commented on whether this could be implemented in the future.

Thanks to Sky news for supplying us with this information.

Image courtesy of 3Q Digital