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Twitter Will Track Your Browsing To Sell Ads

Posted by timothy on from the awareness-is-key dept.

jfruh writes "Remember how social networks were going to transform the advertising industry because they'd tailor ads not to context or to your web browsing history, but to the innate preferences you express through interactions and relationships with friends? Well, that didn't work with Facebook, and it turns out it's not working with Twitter either. The microblogging site has announced that it's getting into the ad retargeting game: you'll soon start seeing promoted tweets that are chosen based on websites you've visited in the past. The innovation, if you can call it that, is that the retargeting will work across devices, so you can be looking at a website on your phone and see promoted tweets on your laptop's browser, or vice versa."

3 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. How does one prevent this ? by middlemen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a genuine question. Assuming one uses Twitter from the phone, how does one prevent the Twitter app on the phone to scan the browsing history ? If they cannot scan my browsing history they cannot give me ads.

    On another note, if there are companies who can scan tweets (such as stocktwits) to give you sentiment analysis, why cant Twitter do the same ? Have they realized that they just have a bunch of web developers who know only Javascript and can't do text processing using it ?

    1. Re:How does one prevent this ? by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And this is true even if you don't have a twitter account or use Twitter. It is just in that case they don't know anything about you.

      And this is why ad blockers, cookie blockers, and script blockers are your friends.

      Deny them the data is the best approach.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Only for the dumb people. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you are not running with adblock on your browsers you deserve to have this crap happen to you. ALL websites need to be treated as hostile (Slashdot included) and you need to run browser extensions that disable and protect you from this crud. Adblock, redirect protectors, privacy reclaimers, etc...

    And if you are a good computer person you install all this stuff on every computer you touch.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.