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Twitter employees admit hundreds of workers have access to private messages in a video, company refutes claim

“We do not proactively review DMs. Period,” Twitter said

January 17, 2018 / 06:47 PM IST
Twitter

Twitter

A video posted on Monday by an investigative journalist group Project Veritas has flung Twitter into a controversy. It claims that hundreds of Twitter employees have access to personal messages exchanged on the microblogging site.

The video shows ‘employees’ of Twitter spilling beans about company’s policy towards the surveillance. Engineers can be heard admitting that hundreds of employees have access to “everything you post online”, including direct messages.

However, the social media giant denied the claim. “We do not proactively review DMs. Period,” BuzzFeed News quoted a company spokesperson as saying.

“A limited number of employees have access to such information, for legitimate work purposes, and we enforce strict access protocols for those employees.”

BuzzFeed when talked to a former employee of Twitter he confirmed company’s stand and said, the claims were "technically accurate to a degree, but exaggerated for effect by drunk idiots."

He said that a small group of employees have access to the contents that too "in response to a report (i.e. 'so and such is harassing me via DM')."

Project Veritas’ video description claimed that Twitter also uses the private contents to its benefit. “Project Veritas has released undercover footage of Twitter engineers and employees admitting that Twitter employees view "everything you post" on their servers, including private "sex messages," and "d*** pics." The engineers also admit that Twitter analyses this information to create a "virtual profile" of you which they sell to advertisers.”

Before this, the group had released two more videos investigating Twitter. One of which claimed that Twitter was ready to “turn over the private communications and deleted tweets of President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice.”

Twitter had pushed back on this claims and said that it "only responds to valid legal requests, and does not share any user information with law enforcement without such a request."

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first published: Jan 17, 2018 06:47 pm

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