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Tech

Twitter Is No Longer Showing Who’s Behind Promoted Tweets

And it’s throwing a wrench into my months-long campaign to block every promoting account.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

I'm a Twitter junkie, and I despise promoted tweets. I run an adblocker when I read Twitter on my desktop, but I usually stick to mobile viewing because of how easy it is to toggle between my two accounts. And every time I see a promoted tweet on mobile, I block the account responsible. According to the site blockedby.me, the average Twitter account has blocked 102 users. I've blocked 2,044 and counting.

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Image: Rachel Pick

My blocking spree is stupid and Sisyphean. I will never stop seeing promoted tweets. But I do it anyway, as some sort of meaningless exercise, throwing pebbles into the yawning void. And now I have been thwarted. Recently, I noticed that Twitter is no longer showing which account is responsible for a promoted tweet.

Previously, you'd see "Promoted by X" at the bottom of each tweet—and the account that promotes a tweet is not always the same as the account that wrote it. For example: a celebrity with an endorsement deal might endorse a product in a tweet, and the company responsible for the product will promote the celebrity's tweet, instead of writing one of their own.

Now, tweets just say "Promoted."

It's worth noting that on desktop, hovering over the word "Promoted" shows some account info, but in all the ads I tested it was the same as the account that wrote the tweet, so it's not clear if that function is meant to reveal the promoting account or simply the tweet's author. And on mobile, the word "Promoted" doesn't link to anything.

I reached out to Twitter to see if the company could explain the change, but the company was not willing to comment on the record.

I now find myself wondering: if I block the accounts that write the tweets, but can't block the accounts promoting the tweets, will promoted tweets from blocked accounts still show up in my timeline? Has Twitter defeated me? And what exactly is the motivation behind obscuring who's promoting ads onto my timeline?

You can try, Twitter, but you'll never break my spirit.