On Wednesday, Twitter released a new browser game intended to help elucidate some of its privacy settings. You can recreate the game called Twitter Data Dash.
“Welcome to PrivaCity!” reads a depiction 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.”
When you create Twitter Data Dash, which was assembled by Momo Pixel, you’ll first select the language you desire to play in and then choose from one of four characters who will escort Data, the dog, on some of the levels. (That character will otherwise occur in text boxes.) The game itself is a relatively straightforward side-scrolling platformer.
Every group is themed around what I can best describe as Twitter Things — one features cats wearing ad boards, another holds you are avoiding trolls — and your goal is to collect five bones as quickly as possible.
If you bring the bones, the game will demonstrate something about Twitter’s privacy settings related to that level and even suggest a button linking to Twitter’s settings. For example, when you hit the cat ad level, you’ll see a message about how Twitter customizes your understanding of the platform and points to where you can turn personalized ads on or off.
A message describes how Twitter customizes your experience on the social network, including ads.
The game has an entertaining pixel art aesthetic. There are, of course, multiple shades of blue throughout the game, and you will become a massive fan of the character designs. Platforming can be cumbersome, but the game is overlooking enough that it’s not too hard to attempt a challenging jump a few times.
Twitter raised the game as part of a more significant push around its privacy policy, which the business has rewritten. “We’ve emphasized clear language and drove away from the legal jargon,” Twitter said on its Safety account. “Beginning today, you can notice the updates to our privacy policy and terms of service in the app via settings and on the redesigned privacy policy site.”
That being said, much of Twitter’s future is doubtful, given that the company has taken Elon Musk’s buyout offer. While he hasn’t said anything specific about strategies to change Twitter’s privacy policies, Musk does plan to loosen Twitter’s moderation policies, among other things.