MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Everyone who uses Twitter should understand and have meaningful control over their data, how it’s used, and when it’s shared. And it’s on them to make that happen. Since the last privacy policy and terms of service update, Twitter has thought a lot about how to make the privacy policy as simple and approachable as possible and heard how it can be improved from the community.
Today, Twitter unveils three pieces of work that they hope will make Twitter’s privacy practices simple and approachable and encourage more people around the world to take charge of their personal information on the service. They include:
- A 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.
- 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 Twitter rewrote theirs to try and make it useful – emphasizing clear language and moving away from legal jargon. Beginning today, you can see the updates to the privacy policy and terms of service in the app via settings and on the 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 of how Twitter personalizes your experience and the ads you see.
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 the new privacy policy video game. Twitter Data Dash will take you through some of the more complicated concepts of the 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, Twitter hopes to encourage more people around the world to take charge of their personal information on their service and maybe even have a little fun in the process. Transparency is core to Twitter’s approach and they want to help you understand the information they collect, how it’s used, and the controls at your disposal. Twitter hopes 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
Twitter is 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, the goal is to propose standardized privacy icons for privacy settings and controls recognizable on Twitter and elsewhere globally. Through research and conversations with stakeholders, Twitter learned that those who have used or seen the privacy settings feel more in control of their privacy on Twitter and that there was more they could do to make settings and controls easier to understand. Twitter’s been ideating and conducting research into privacy iconography and plans to publish the 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 the new privacy policy you can reach Twitter’s Office of Data Protection here.
