In case you haven’t done so already, now would be a great time to disable cellular data use on your iPhone’s Twitter app. I recently made sure to do this after being appalled at how much data Twitter was eating up thanks to its autoplay Vine videos… and now it’s about to get worse. Per The Guardian, Twitter is now adding autoplay Periscope videos to your feed with a new update to its Twitter iOS app that’s rolling out today. This means that live streaming videos will automatically start playing in your feed whether you interact with them or not.
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“The move will see Twitter-owned Periscope video cards automatically playing within the Twitter iOS app, in a similar way to Twitter’s Vines, pre-recorded video or gifs – which all currently download and play without requiring the user to interact with them,” The Guardian writes. “Users who tap on the Periscope videos will then see them in full screen with comments and hearts from other viewers. The feature will be rolling out to Twitter for iOS users within the next few days, with Android and web versions works in progress.”
This obviously has some potentially bad implications for any Twitter users who have capped data plans, as Twitter’s Periscope videos have the potential to blow through your monthly limits in no time at all.
In case you don’t know, this is how you disable cellular data use for Twitter on iOS:
- Open up settings
- Click on Cellular
- Scroll down to the options that let you pick which apps can use cellular data
- Toggle Twitter off
