Twitter Gives Advertisers Your User Data

[Koshok]

I actually approve of this. All Twitter is doing, (so it seems) is collecting publicly available information and passing it on to marketers. The end result is a few ads that actually apply to me, and a free Twitter site. The title of this article made it sound like they were giving out e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

 

[ThePS1Fan]

So giving the police tweets to help in a criminal case, bad. Giving large corporations tweets to pester users with bullshit, good.
Gotta love the Internet these days. Wait no, not love. What's the word that means the exact opposite of that?

 

[Kargathia]

Yesterday twitter was 'on the side of the people' for not handing over data from an 'Occupier' to a Judge (whether the court order was legal/just or not).

Today they'll happily hand over your info marketers, advertisers, and no doubt to corporations. Then spam you with advertisements.

Hooray.

No, they do not "hand over your information to advertisers". Advertisers check a box regarding which category their product belongs to, and twitter shows that ad to anyone who - based on their activity - might be interested. At no point companies are given lists of user names, or even the ability to advertise to all followers of a certain feed.

Sure, getting repeated ads for low-quality video games and dating services is downright obnoxious, but did you really expect Twitter to run the service out of the goodness of their hearts?

 

[Tiger Sora]

And the eternal struggle of internet privacy continues. Its a shame money buys morals.

 

[jbm1986]

Eh, I'm not on twitter.

People know every time they use Google, the Google team stores that information and remembers their browsing patterns, right? Their hard drives storing this shit are stored in huuuge warehouses, collecting dust and remembering your every move.

This isn't new. Since the internet began, every key press you've made was recorded and has been used against you at some point.

FB isn't much better. I'm not really a huge social networking person anyhow. I prefer to socialize either face to face or via cell phone.

Spoiler: Couldn't Resist

 

[Tradjus]

Wow, it's almost as though the simple fact that every time a large social networking system attempts to monetize itself too heavily, it collapses, is totally incomprehensible to people with business degrees.
It's -so- obvious that when things get just a -little- too obtrusive, people will move on, yet no network site can help pushing it's luck, the people at the top salivate at the "Prospect" of profits based on their user numbers, and push the big red "Destroy everything we've built in the mindless and ultimately futile and unsuccessful pursuit of profit" button.

 

[MagmaMan]

If this is true then why I am I getting advertisements on Twitter for boy bands? My twitter account tweets like 98% Transformers, 1% Call of Duty, 1% other video games.

 

[AzraelSteel]

I'm unclear, maybe because I've been beta-ing this without knowing it. Are promoted tweets new? I've been seeing them in my feed for weeks if not months.

Also, from my experience with them, they are MILDLY annoying, at worst. I see a "Promoted Tweet" once in a while, and it is gone quickly with a dismiss.

 

[Saulkar]

Guess what service always advertised products relevant to my interests and!

Fucking Steam and no others!

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

Heh, it's a good thing all the information on my Twitter account is fucking bogus.

 

[Korak the Mad]

Yet another good reason why I don't have a Twitter account.

 

[maxben]

Twitter are using advertising to support a service I get for free, and making it so the adverts might be something I'm actually interested in, rather than colleges on a different continent or viagra, by running searches on information I made public by tweeting about it in the first place? The cads!

Seriously, guys. Advertising funds the internet as we know it. Chill the heck out. Title of this made it look like they were handing out my email address or phone number or something.

So are TV shows, so what? Have ads, fine, but dont tell me that selling my info to a company so they know exactly what I am doing is somehow better for me. You can have ads WITHOUT breaking down my right to privacy. And if you are thinking for a second that this will mean you will get ads that relate to you in some way to the point where you would actually want to purchase something, dont make me laugh. The connection between what you tweet and what you want to buy is tenuous at best. The only people who gain form this are is Twitter, because now they can charge more for advertising as its coming with data. Neither you or the companies are getting something substantial, but Twitter has an advertising hook (because they have to advertise their advertising space) that they can sell to companies (and "hooks" are not always, and in this case arent, real benefits).
And who says they wouldnt hand out phone numbers and email addresses if they could? you know those "store credit cards" or "points cards"? Thats exactly what they do, they sell your personal information to data companies who compile info on you to sell to other companies, and the store itself uses the data on what you buy to send you spam themselves (which unlike Twitter has a point because what you buy IS correlated to wht you are going to buy).

tl;dr they do not need to sell my data to have ads.