Everyone who uses Twitter should understand and have meaningful control over their data, how it’s used, and when it’s shared. The company said that “it’s on us to make that happen. Since our last privacy policy and terms of service update, we’ve thought a lot about how to make our privacy policy as simple and approachable as possible and heard how we can improve from the community.“
The company unveiled three pieces of work that it hopes will make Twitter’s privacy practices simple and approachable and encourage more people around the world to take charge of their personal information on our service.
They include:
- Our reimagined privacy policy and privacy site: rewritten with easy to understand language.
- Twitter Data Dash: a new privacy video game to teach people about the privacy policies in a fun and engaging format.
- Its research into privacy icons: for privacy settings and controls recognizable on Twitter and elsewhere globally
Privacy policy and privacy site
“It shouldn’t take a law degree to understand privacy policies, so we’ve rewritten ours to try and make it useful – emphasizing clear language and moving away from legal jargon,” the company stated. “Beginning today, you can see the updates to our privacy policy and terms of service in the app via settings and on our redesigned privacy policy site.”
Changes include:
- A rewritten tone to the privacy policy with less “legalese” and more easily understood language.
- A new organization of the privacy policy into three primary sections: data collection, data use, and data sharing.
- An expanded scope of reference to content on Twitter beyond just Tweets, accounting for the increasingly rich media found on Twitter.
- A clearer explanation about how the company personalizes the Twitter experience and the ads seen.
Additionally, the revamped format of the privacy policy site includes direct answers to commonly asked questions about how data is collected and used. Takeaways at the top of each section of the site are now more easily read and new illustrations bring the privacy policy to life.
Twitter Data Dash
“Twitter Data Dash is our new privacy policy video game. Twitter Data Dash will take you through some of the more complicated concepts of our privacy policy, help you learn how to safely navigate the Twitterverse, and discover the tools that put you in the driver’s seat when it comes to your data.”
“Through Twitter Data Dash, we hope to encourage more people around the world to take charge of their personal information on our service and maybe even have a little fun in the process. Transparency is core to our approach and we want to help you understand the information we collect, how it’s used, and the controls at your disposal. We hope Twitter Data Dash introduces a fun and interactive way to learn about a topic that has historically been anything but.”
What’s next? Privacy iconography
The company is also working on reimagined privacy iconography – visual symbols that represent core settings related to security and privacy across the service. “Like the magnifying glass is a widely recognized icon indicating a search function, our goal is to propose standardized privacy icons for privacy settings and controls recognizable on Twitter and elsewhere globally. Through research and conversations with stakeholders, we learned that those who have used or seen our privacy settings feel more in control of their privacy on Twitter and that there was more we could do to make settings and controls easier to understand. We’ve been ideating and conducting research into privacy iconography and plan to publish our findings and ideas soon.”
The new privacy policy, redesigned site, and Twitter Data Dash are available today in nine languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian.
If you have questions about our new privacy policy you can reach our Office of Data Protection here.
