Twitter to take action against developers who misuse its data

Twitter says that it is expanding and fast-tracking efforts to punish those that use its data for surveillance or other activities that violate its terms of service.

Making an announcement in its blog post, the social networking site said it will double up its efforts at investigating cases of wrong-doing and ensure compliance with its anti-surveillance policies.

“Using Twitter’s Public APIs or data products to track or profile protesters and activists is absolutely unacceptable and prohibited,” Twitter said in the blog post.

“We have an internal process to review use cases for Gnip data products when new developers are onboard and, where appropriate, we may reject all or part of a requested use case. Over the coming months, you’ll see us take on expanded enforcement and compliance efforts, including adding more resources for swiftly investigating and acting on complaints about the misuse of Twitter’s Public APIs and Gnip data products,” it added.

Bloomberg had reported in October about Geofeedia and Snaptrends marketing social media monitoring tools that can pull on location signals and other data, drawn from Twitter to police departments and to authoritarian regimes.

In response, Twitter cut-off firehose access to some of those companies, effectively killing a big part of their business model.

Twitter’s Tuesday announcement to scale up its efforts against surveillance should reassure Twitter users and civil liberties groups who are concerned about the use of social media as a surveillance tool.