Twitter's bringing back your default timeline — hopefully for good, this time
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Loading... - Annette Monet
- 25 Jan 2023
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The site will now remember which tab you selected last
Twitter seems to have a touch of identity dysphoria that even predates its purchase by non-reclusive billionaire Elon Musk. Despite its initial success being rooted in timely, consumable blurbs, the company constantly tries to push the type of algorithmic home feed made popular by slower-paced, longer-form social media sites. Thankfully, users of the platform never seem to let Twitter stray too far from its origins.
Earlier this week, Twitter split its home feed into two tabs: For you and Following. The first tab used an algorithm to recommend content you might be interested in, without much focus on when the tweets were posted. The second tab, Following, was Twitter’s classic reverse-chronological timeline, containing only posts from accounts you follow, and always showing you the latest news first. The tabs could be swiped between for easy access, but tapping the Sparkle icon at the top of the feed no longer gave you the option to set For you as the primary view — in effect, the algorithm was now the default, and there was no escaping it.
After predictable backlash, CEO Elon Musk announced that the company would work on a feature that would remember which of the tabs you last visited. That feature was formally unveiled by the Twitter team today — now, the web version of Twitter remembers which tab you last selected and automatically defaults to that option when you next load your home feed. Read More…
