oh well
Unsubscribe.
Delete account.
Twitter is to start pushing adverts from companies which Twitter users are not following into their tweet streams, but only ones it has decided they will be interested in: so that's OK then. At the moment, Twitter only pushes adverts into a user's stream of tweets if the Twitter user has signed up to "follow" the company …
It would be relatively simple. If you think about it your Twitter feed is just the public timeline with your following filter applied (i.e. filtered so that only those selected people appear). All you have to do is implement this manually in your Twitter client by checking that each tweet's owner is in your followers list.
On the other hand, the chances that Twitter won't consider this a violation of their API conditions (which I imagine are being rewritten as we comment) are very slim...
Section 11 of the DPA98 allows UK data subjects to request that an organisation ceases processing their personal data for direct marketing purposes. The ICO deem all online advertising appearing within a data subject's logged-in pages to constitute direct marketing. If Twitter were a UK-based company we could excercise our right under section 11 and ask them to remove the advertising from our accounts; failure to respond to such a request could result in criminal prosecution, non-criminal enforcement or audit against Twitter.
So what happens if I exercise my right on Twitter? Will they comply bearing in mind that they're a US company?