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May 16, 2022 01:44 am

Twitter Turns Its Privacy Policy Into a Videogame about a Dog

What did you think of Twitter Data Dash? The Guardian describes it as "a Super Nintendo-style browser game that recaps Twitter's private policy." And the Verge applauds the game — released Wednesday — for its "delightful pixel art aesthetic.""Welcome to PrivaCity!" reads a description of the game on the site. "Get your dog, Data, safely to the park. "Dodge cat ads, swim through a sea of DMs, battle trolls, and learn how to take control of your Twitter experience along the way...." The game itself is a pretty straightforward side-scrolling platformer. Each level is themed around what I can best describe as Twitter Things — one features cats wearing ad boards, another has you avoiding trolls — and your goal is to collect five bones as quickly as you can. If you get the bones, the game will explain something about Twitter's privacy settings related to that level and even offer a button linking to Twitter's settings. When you beat the cat ad level, for example, you'll see a message about how Twitter customizes your experience on the platform and points to where you can turn personalized ads on or off.... Twitter introduced the game as part of a bigger push around its privacy policy, which the company has rewritten. "We've emphasized clear language and moved away from legal jargon," Twitter said on its Safety account. Gizmodo calls the game "adorable," but also "buggy". And they also have some quibbles with its ultimate message:It's a bit rich that Twitter made a game about avoiding faceless advertisers when the platform is actively doing everything it can to make ads tougher to avoid.... [A]fter watching our personas bounce from level to level with our lil blue dog in tow, it became clear that this game is less for us — or any Twitter user, really — and more for the company itself. It's a way to paper over uncomfortable topics like "privacy" and "consent" and "ownership of our personal data" with a lil blue dog, collecting lil bones by hopping across lil stages. Just promise you won't think about where those bones came from in the first place.

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