X offers one meaningful user protection—users retain ownership of their content and restricted-audience settings are acknowledged. But the service also claims a sweeping content license, permits AI training on user content, gathers extensive behavioral and technical data, tracks signed-out users, and links identities across devices and signals.
X is a social platform that lets users keep ownership of their posts, but requires a very broad, sublicensable license to use, transform, distribute, and analyze that content, including for AI training. Its privacy posture is data-intensive: it collects detailed activity, message content, device and location data, ad interaction data, and can link signed-in and signed-out behavior to infer identity.
Points of interest
Posting gives X a worldwide, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, and display your content in any media. This is much broader than what is strictly needed just to host your posts.
"you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish"
X expressly says it can analyze your content and use it to improve services, including training machine learning and AI models. Users who post may therefore help train AI systems without additional payment.
"for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models"
X collects the contents of Direct Messages, along with recipients, timestamps, and metadata for encrypted messages. Users should not assume ordinary messaging on the service is private from the platform.
"when you use Direct Messages, including the contents of the messages, the recipients, and date and time of messages"
X can let other companies, organizations, or individuals use or redistribute your content, including syndication, broadcast, and publication on other media and services. That expands downstream use beyond the platform itself.
"to make Content... available to other companies, organizations or individuals... syndication, broadcast, distribution, repost, promotion or publication"
X states you will not be paid for its use of your content or for others' licensed uses. The terms treat your ability to use the service as sufficient compensation.
"no compensation paid to you... as the use of the Services by you is hereby agreed as being sufficient compensation"
X says it may collect log information even if you do not have an account or are signed out, including pages visited, search terms, ads shown, and cookie identifiers. That means tracking can extend beyond active account use.
"even if you have not created an account or are signed out"
X may associate your account with browsers, devices, email addresses, phone numbers, and signed-out identifiers to infer identity. This can make it harder to stay compartmentalized across devices or sessions.
"we may also associate your account with browsers or devices other than those you use to sign into X"
X collects information about your interactions with ads served on X and off X, including views, clicks, and video engagement. This supports ad profiling based on behavior across contexts.
"When you view or interact with ads we serve on or off X, we may collect information about those views or interactions"
X automatically collects approximate location and can collect precise location if you enable it. Location data can be sensitive, especially when combined with activity and ad profiles.
"we collect some information about your approximate location... You can also choose to share your current precise location"
X says you still own the content you create and post. That is better than an ownership transfer, though it is paired with a very broad license back to X.
"What’s yours is yours — you own your Content"
If you use features that limit distribution to a restricted community, X says it will respect that choice. This is a useful transparency point, though it does not undo the broad underlying license.
"if you have chosen via our features to limit the distribution of your Content to a restricted community, we will respect that choice"
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Documents
Terms of Service
source ↗- •You keep ownership of content you create, post, or display through the service, including embedded audio, photos, and videos.
- •By posting content, you give X a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, publish, distribute, and display it.
- •X may sublicense your content rights to others and make your content available on other media, services, broadcasts, or distributions.
- •X may analyze your content and related information to improve the service, including training machine learning and AI models.
- •X says it will respect settings that limit your content’s distribution to a restricted community when you choose those features.
- •You will not be paid for X’s or others’ use of your content under this license; service use is treated as sufficient compensation.
- •X and its partners may modify, adapt, translate, curate, or transform your content to fit different media or distribution methods.
- •You promise you have all rights and permissions needed to post your content and grant X these licenses.
- •You also promise your content does not infringe copyright or other proprietary rights unless you are legally allowed to use it.
Privacy Policy
source ↗- •X collects your activity, including posts, likes, reposts, bookmarks, follows, replies, Spaces participation, and communications with X.
- •X collects Direct Message contents, recipients, timestamps, and metadata related to Encrypted Messages when you use messaging features.
- •X may receive payment and transaction details, including amounts paid, transaction dates, and subscription expiration or auto-renewal information.
- •X collects device and connection data such as IP address, browser type, device identifiers, operating system, carrier, language, and installed apps.
- •X collects approximate location automatically and may collect precise location if you enable location settings in your account.
- •X may link your account to devices, browsers, email addresses, phone numbers, and signed-out activity to infer your identity.
- •X may collect log data even if you are signed out or have no account, including pages visited, search terms, ads shown, and cookies.
- •X collects information about your interactions with ads on and off X, including views, clicks, and video ad engagement.
- •X uses cookies and similar technologies to operate services and collect website usage data, though some features work without cookies.
- •X may receive log information from third-party sites that display X content, including the web page you visited.