Phenquestions
If you are a Twitter regular using the main website of the service as your entry point and not an app or program, you may have noticed promoted content on the site in various places.
Companies and individuals can promote contents on Twitter, for instance to display ads directly to users, to promote hash tags, or an account to increase the followers of the account and interaction with that account.
Promoted content may be displayed in various areas on Twitter. Promoted Accounts may be displayed on a user's home screen, in search results or on the Who To Follow screen.
The same is true for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends which may also be displayed on timelines, search results and other locations including Twitter apps.
Twitter highlights promoted contents on the site so that you can distinguish it from regular content that is posted on it.
Ads on Twitter were static in the beginning but that changed when video ads become the latest craze. Video ads may play automatically on Twitter; users may turn off autoplay on Twitter to block these video ads from playing automatically.
In addition to that, these ads were static which means that most users may not be disturbed by them in the same way as they are from media ads for example. Some may be video ads, however, but these
If you don't plan to interact with any of these offers on Twitter, you may feel that they take away space on the site that could be used better otherwise.
While there is no direct way to hide promoted content on Twitter, you can install extensions to hide these elements on Twitter.
Extensions are available for Firefox and Chrome. Since other browsers support these extensions as well, they may also run in browsers such as Opera, Pale Moon or SeaMonkey.
- Unpromote Twitter for Firefox hides promoted tweets on the Twitter timeline.
Bad Bird Blockeris a Firefox add-on that automates the hiding of promoted content on Twitter. It hides Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends on Twitter automatically. You may notice them for a short time after page load before they are hidden by the add-on.- Remove Promotions for Twitter is a Google Chrome extension that removes promoted accounts, tweets and trends on the site as well.
Both add-ons work without user interaction and do not offer any options.
It is naturally also possible to hide elements on Twitter using ad-blockers. This may be the better option if you are already running a program or extension for that purpose.
Closing Words
Twitter's advertisement is not overly intrusive and clearly labeled as such. I won't be using these tools as I don't find the ads problematic at all. Then again, I don't spend a lot of time on Twitter.
