When asked why it took the images down, Twitter said it does not share information on specific cases. But it did refer reporters to its policies regarding takedown requests from the family members of deceased users. That indicates that the firm took down the photos and videos of Foley's death not because of a request from the U.S. government--which reached out to social media sites regarding the video on Tuesday--but because the family had asked it to, shortly after the news broke. The policy, recently changed, outlines the guidelines Twitter follows to remove imagery of deceased individuals at the request of immediate family members -- a policy enacted after some Twitter users bullied the daughter of comedian Robin Williams off the network by sending her altered images supposedly depicting her father's corpse. How does Twitter scrub its network of the offensive images, which tend to spread online very quickly? The process is actually low-tech. When a request is submitted, Twitter employees on the company's safety and legal teams look at the image that's been flagged, reviewing each one individually, and evaluating the public interest and newsworthiness of each message. That, for example, could explain why some images of Foley's death were taken down immediately, while others bore a warning: It may seem incomprehensible to many users that in an age of algorithms and high technology, Twitter would remove offensive images by hand rather than by automation. Twitter and other companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Google all have and use an automated technology that lets them identify and flag images based on certain criteria.
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