In unfortunate news, Twitter has announced it will begin collecting even more data from its users, which it will share with the platform’s many advertisers. The company has also updated its app to coincide with this announcement by no longer allowing users to control what personal data Twitter will send to its business partners.
While the company has claimed it shares data anonymously, leaving out the user’s name, email, phone number and Twitter handle, it seems rather controversial to prevent users from controlling what data to share with third parties.
Shared data includes information related to which ads users may have come across while scrolling through the Twitter app, how users interact with the ads and even the user’s phone identifier tracking.
Previously, the Twitter app allowed users to disable the social media giant from sharing their data with its business partners. Now, this data sharing will be enabled as a default setting with no way to disable it.
According to Twitter, these changes to its platform were necessary for it to continue operating at no cost to its users. Beginning today, the app will now display the following message when opened:
“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. These changes, which help Twitter to continue operating as a free service, are reflected now in your settings.”
Twitter won’t force all users to share information with third parties, however. As required by legislation in the European Union and United Kingdom, apps are unable to collect data from users without their explicit permission. This means users can still opt-out of sharing their data with Twitter’s business partners.
