Twitter users just got less control over their data

Twitter has changed its policy on sharing your data with advertisers – an alteration that recently took some element of choice away from some Twitter users, upping the amount of data shared with Twitters “business partners”. 

So, what exactly has changed? Before this update, users were able to toggle a setting that said “Share your data with Twitter’s business partners”. Now, the option has been removed.

This data could include your IP address and information about which adverts you watched and interacted with on the platform.

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However, this change will not affect users in the EU and UK, due to the stricter GDPR laws that are in place in those regions.

The nature of this change suggests that a lot of Twitter users may have been accessing the setting and turning it off. This would, of course, reduce Twitter’s earnings from selling data to the advertisers in question.

A notification appearing on the Twitter app said: “The control you have over what information Twitter shares with its business partners has changed. Specifically, your ability to control mobile app advertising measurements has been removed, but you can control whether to share some non-public data to improve Twitter’s marketing activities on other sites and apps.”

Twitters terms and conditions do make it clear that the social media platform does not share your name, phone number, email address or Twitter username with advertisers.

While no one likes to have their data passed around willy-nilly, Twitter have reminded users that transactions like this allow the company to run the platform as a free service.

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A Twitter spokesperson told The Verge that this change is “part of our ongoing work around transparency and control. We want to ensure that people understand the settings we provide, what they do, and how to use them.”