Twitter is finally jumping on board the social media data privacy train. On Tuesday, Damien Kieran, Twitter's data protection officer, announced in a blog post that they will soon be updating their Terms and Privacy Policy.
Protecting and defending your privacy is at the heart of our work. Today, we’ve launched our new Privacy Policy, which will come into effect on May 25 https://t.co/2ED5MzjG5M
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) April 24, 2018
The updated policy has been published and will roll out on May 25th to all users. This news comes just in time as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules are said to go into effect on May 25. One after another, we are seeing all social networks make this announcement. Facebook is, of course, the social network under the spotlight right now. They too have been working on improving their data transparency in hopes to save face and regain trust from users.
Kieran explains the purpose of this update is to better clarify and inform users about the types of data we share with and how Twitter uses it. "We believe you should know the types of data you share with us and how we use it..."
Most importantly, you should have meaningful control over both. We want to empower you to make the best decisions about the information that you share with us and to ensure you feel confident that your data is protected and secure.
Damien Kieran
Data Protection
Twitter collects some personal information from us to deliver relevant tweets, ads and other on-platform content to us. Most of us understand this generally, but Twitter is working to be even more transparent and clear with users about what exactly they know and are using to target us. The goal of this update is clarity for users. "We’ve expanded and revised content throughout the updated Privacy Policy to make sure that some of the more legalistic or technical language is as clear as possible," says Kieran.
This update shouldn't have any effect on any of our Twitter accounts; this is more of a courtesy update to help users feel more in control of their data. Although this is technically an updated Privacy Policy spurred by the EU's changing data privacy regulations, everyone can gain a better understanding of how their data is being used by reviewing this recent update.
If you care to better understand what data you are sharing and how it is being used, you can go ahead and read Twitter's upcoming Privacy Policy in full.
