Twitter Rolls Back Its Decision To Force You Into the Out-of-Order Timeline

Last week, Twitter introduced a change to the timeline that "would default to showing the algorithmically served Home feed while the reverse-chronological Latest feed was accessible in a separate tab," reports The Verge. "The change [...] made it more difficult to view tweets in chronological order." Twitter is now reverting things to the way following significant backlash. From the report: Some users shared criticism of the change almost immediately after its March 10th announcement, as the Latest feed is preferred to the Home feed for many. The out-of-sequence Home feed can, at times, be confusing, especially for people who use Twitter for updates during a breaking news event like the war in Ukraine. However, two Twitter execs noted in replies to Verge contributing editor Casey Newton that they would be working on the problem, and it appears that the original change won't be going through as planned. "We take feedback seriously, and in this case, we heard the new pinned Home & Latest wasn't giving you the level of control over your timeline that you want," Twitter spokesperson Shaokyi Amdo said in a statement to The Verge.

However, based on what the execs said, it seems Twitter may be investigating other possible changes to the timeline in the future. "Giving people choice and control over their Twitter experience is super important," Twitter's newly named VP of consumer product, Jay Sullivan, said in a reply to Newton on March 12th. "I'll be working on this. Stay tuned." Sullivan added that he was hoping the platform could achieve "a nice balance for all."

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Ahh, the wonders of Slashspot. A long string of ASCII swastikas is fine, but basic punctuation will be blocked by its lame "lameness filter".

Giving people choice and control over their Twitte

[egr]

Yeah, right. I don't buy it. The trends is everywhere, sorting order of the comments on facebook, reddit, youtube. Hide the negative, show only positive. Give more drug to the people. They are just measuring whenever is backslash is too much or not. But ultimately they will do it again. People will eat any shit up, like youtube stars reduced to likes/dislikes reduced to likes. Happy place indeed.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Giving people choice over comments

[CaptQuark]

This is a problem with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Amazon. How can they force you to see the information they want to you see if it is buried in some chronological listing? They want to determine which comments or feedback are "most important" for you to read first, instead of whatever order they happened to be sent or posted. If there are 1000 comments, how dare you want to read the most recent first instead of the paid posts they want you to see.

Imagine Slashdot if FP wasn't the first thing you saw

Re:

[DarkOx]

It think its bigger than that. I don't see any posting much of any personal content to social media any more at least not among my group. There still the extremly banal stuff like expressions of birthday and holiday wishes, nice to see Bob again after his deployment, blah blah.. Nobody is posting 30 pics of their vacation or even mentioning they went on vacation. Nobody talks about their kids etc anymore.

I think its mostly because there is always some minor acquaintance that needs to express their judge

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Twitter - just a tip, we promise

[sinij]

Just because users "won" this round, doesn't mean that Twitter isn't messing with your thinking in a hundred other ways.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

ok

[phantomfive]

Now Facebook should do the same.

Twitter = evil

[Powercntrl]

I already regarded Twitter as a prime example of the worst way imaginable to attempt a discussion online, and yet they managed to outdo themselves. I don't know if I'm just old or Twitter really is the pinnacle of bad interface design, but trying to do anything on Twitter, beyond just "liking" shit that other people have posted, is incredibly frustrating. I'm still not even clear on what the real functional difference is between a retweet and a reply (other than it quoting the original post), and the char

Re:

[egr]

Twitter as a conversation tool is rather a niche. IMO it is more like RSS replacement. Most users I know never tweet, just use it get news and updates.

Advertising

[fermion]

I have recently started using Twitter again. As far as I can tell this Home feed is to place more promoted tweets which is mostly advertising. I have been in developers meeting where it was a non trivial choice between revenue and pissing off users.

Ok

[dohzer]

That's nice. I never check the timeline anyway. I just get notifications for the one Tweeter I care about.

"a nice balance for all"

[Some Guy]

...uhhh what "balance"?

Just show me the feed the way I want - reverse-chronological order - and don't change it behind my back.

Not surprised at all.

[MtViewGuy]

There's a reason why Twitter users like me revolted: people strongly prefer the default chronological order for reading tweets. Hopefully, this will finally force Meta to default back to chronological order in both Facebook and Instagram.

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[esperto]

I really don't understand the logic of these companies, basically they want to change the order because of advertising (never forget, users are the product, advertisers are the client for them) but why don't let people see in the order they want and interweave the advertising in the order the company sees as the most relevant to them? Why force a stupid sorting that hides... oooh and there we have it, they want to hide some messages to force some accounts to pay them to promote such messages, that's why the

NP I don't Twitter

[bsdetector101]

Mindless people on Twitter and a lot of bots !

on the importance scale...

[jbmartin6]

Giving people choice and control over their Twitter experience is super important

A nice piece of double speak considering they just tried to take away that choice and control. How long until the voice jail says "your call is super important to us.."?

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[gweihir]

Giving people choice and control over their Twitter experience is super important

A nice piece of double speak considering they just tried to take away that choice and control. How long until the voice jail says "your call is super important to us.."?

Not long. You are the product, after all.

Latest is for users; Home is for Twitter

[swm]

Latest allows users to engage with Twitter in a directed fashion. They read what is new in their chosen feeds and then get on with their lives.

Twitter desperately does not want users to do this. Twitter wants to keep users mired in an endless scrolling morass of Twitter stuff, sinking deeper and deeper into the tar pit while Twitter puts ads in the stream.

"Giving people choice and control over their Twitter experience is super important" [...] Sullivan added that he was hoping the platform could achieve "a

Can't force me into a timeline

[marcle]

If I'm not on Twitter, can you? Checkmate, Twits!

This is news to them?

[danomac]

Seriously, it's news to them that people don't want to see things that Twitter wants them to see and would rather see things as they are posted in chronological order??? </facepalm>

F Twitter

[speedlaw]

I got perma banned for saying certain politicians should be tarred and feathered. It was a joke but I got reported. Later, I mentioned I got a two week ban for saying "tarred and feathered" but no context, and that resulted in a perma ban. I've been made a mod of other groups for less, not banned....