The internet settings you need to change to starve Musk's Twitter of profits

Concerns about content moderation and advertising arose this weekend after Elon Musk acquired Twitter on Friday.

Musk, 51, has promised to make Twitter a place of free speech with less censorship and banning. Already, some pointed to evidence that discriminatory language increased following Musk's acquisition.

With the opportunity for hateful behavior to increase, some wonder whether advertisers will pull ads off the platform.

Others, like the Washington Post, aren't interested in playing the waiting game and have already given people privacy recommendations to decrease advertisers' incentives.

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

In an article updated on Friday, the Post gave Twitter users several privacy recommendations to ensure advertisers cannot track their demographics- thus making them unusable for profit.

Firstly, the Post recommends people turn off ad preferences by going to "settings and privacy" then clicking on "privacy and safety" and scrolling down to the “data sharing and off-Twitter activity” section.

Turn off:

• Personalized Ads
• Allow use of where you see Twitter content across the Web
• Personalize based on your inferred identity
• Allow additional information sharing with business partners

By making it more difficult for advertisers to profit off your Twitter usage, it starves the social media platform of value.

"Twitter is free because it makes its money on advertising and access to data about its hundreds of millions of users," the article reads.

Musk tried to reassure advertisers that the platform would not be a "free-for-all hellscape" of content, but it's unclear if they've been convinced.

Others recommended downloading your Twitter data archive too.

This can be done by going to "settings and privacy" then "your account" and "download an archive of your data."

For those still concerned about privacy, the Post recommends turning off location settings for the app as well.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.