X (Twitter) — Policy Change
Executive Summary
Twitter quietly abandoned its support for Do Not Track, ceasing to honor the browser signal it had championed since 2012. Simultaneously, Twitter expanded its data retention window for ad impressions from 10 days to 30 days, enabling more extensive user profiling for advertising purposes.
What Happened
On June 18, 2017, Twitter abandoned its support for Do Not Track, a browser privacy setting it had honored since 2012, and switched to the Digital Advertising Alliance's self-regulatory program instead. The company simultaneously extended its data retention period for web browsing information from 10 days to 30 days and introduced new tracking and targeting options that were enabled by default. Twitter continued to track users through Tweet buttons, Follow buttons, and embedded tweets on external websites, building profiles of browsing history even for non-Twitter users.
Who Is Affected
All Twitter users and non-users who visit websites containing Twitter buttons or embedded tweets are affected by these changes. The expanded tracking applies regardless of whether someone has a Twitter account, as the company sets unique cookies to build browsing profiles across the web. Users who previously relied on Do Not Track settings to limit Twitter's data collection lost that protection entirely.
Why It Matters
Twitter was the first major social network to honor Do Not Track in 2012, making its abandonment of the standard particularly significant for privacy advocates. The Digital Advertising Alliance program Twitter adopted instead allows companies to continue collecting user information even after opt-out, merely showing untargeted ads rather than stopping data collection. The program relies on third-party cookies that are incompatible with common privacy measures like blocking third-party cookies or clearing cookies regularly, making meaningful opt-out extremely difficult for users.
What You Should Do
Visit Twitter's Settings under Privacy and Safety, then Personalization and Data, to uncheck boxes related to ad personalization based on your information, apps, location history, and websites you visit. Review the Your Twitter Data section in account settings to see and remove interest categories that advertisers have assigned to you. Consider using ad blockers and privacy-focused browser extensions like the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Privacy Badger to prevent tracking across websites with embedded Twitter content.
AI-Assisted
Event summaries are generated by Claude AI from verified sources and reviewed by humans before publication.
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