Twitter To Remove Photos, Videos of Deceased Family Members

(Photo : REUTERS) Twitter has announced on Tuesday a conditional policy that would permit families to request the removal of images and videos of the recently departed.

Twitter just tweeted a sensitive side.

As an act of respect, Twitter has announced on Tuesday a conditional policy that would permit families to request the removal of images and videos of the recently departed, reports said.

The social media company respects the wishes of loved ones and will remove media contents of deceased individuals in certain circumstances, detailed by Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler in a statement that he tweeted on Tuesday.

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The statement suggested verified immediate family members or authorized people that can act on behalf of the estate to work with Twitter for account deactivation or media content removal of the deceased.

They can send an email to privacy@twitter.com containing some required documents such as copies of death certificate, government-issued identification and signed statements from the family members.

However, Twitter may not be able to honor every request as it will consider public interest factors like the newsworthiness of the content.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the update on Twitter's policy paved a way for grieving family members to scrub the social media contents of their loved ones, whether or not the content itself breaks the rules of the social networking site.

This new policy has been seemingly triggered by two recent events.

First was the outcry about Zelda Williams who was harassed on Twitter last week. The daughter of the recently deceased Robin Williams was reportedly bombarded by edited images of her father's death and insulting messages.

The owners of the two accounts who sent Williams fake images were suspended while Williams claimed not using her account anymore.

The second was the more recent incident where gruesome photos and videos of the beheading of late American journalist James Wright Foley circulated on the social network. The account that tweeted the contents was also suspended, said The Wall Street Journal.

Tags James Wright Foley , Robin Williams , Zelda Williams , The Wall Street Journal , Twitter