Twitter has finally brought back exclusively chronological timelines, more than two years after phasing them out.
In a move many would characterize as restoring a functionality it never should have removed in the first place, the social media platform announced on Monday that it will now allow users to fully opt out of “curated” timelines, in which “top-ranked” tweets — according to an algorithm, anyway — are shown first, above more recent tweets displayed in chronological order.
Users have always had the ability to turn off the curation function, which is listed as “Show the best tweets first” in Twitter’s settings menu — but only in a limited sense. Even users who disabled the “Show the best tweets first” setting were shown curated categories of tweets they couldn’t opt out of seeing (including popular tweets from people they didn’t follow) and which affected the order of their feeds. In essence, there was no such thing as a purely chronological timeline.
But now, citing user feedback, Twitter has restored the ability for people to view their feeds in all their completely uncurated glory.
6/ Our plan is to eventually replace this setting when the easier-to-access switch described above is available. We’ll keep you updated and are listening to your feedback – let us know what you think!— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 17, 2018
The changes followed a wave of clever workarounds and DIY filtering shared among users in an effort to achieve a change that many people wanted, but Twitter seemed unwilling to make.
In August, developer (and high-profile Twitter user) Andy Baio used Twitter’s search function to concoct a filter that displayed users’ timelines in uncurated, chronological order. It quickly became the engine behind a “new” website, realtwitter.com:
You know, I've had the domain https://t.co/Nu7N4UZsmF for years now, and never did anything with it. I just made it a forward to your filter url, for the benefit of mankind.— Erin Sparling (@everyplace) August 17, 2018
Baio’s simple yet much-lauded hack was followed by multiple viral tweets about how to tweak your Twitter settings to reverse-engineer the chronological timeline of your dreams.
The best workaround I've found to Twitter's horrible new algorithm is putting this in the search bar: filter:follows -filter:replies include:nativeretweetsYou will get your old chronological timeline back with no "likes" and with retweets from people you actually follow.— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) September 12, 2018
Uh. Muting suggest_recycled_tweet_inline and suggest_activity_tweet actually has fixed my timeline. It's all chronological and there are barely any "x and y liked" tweets. pic.twitter.com/Dva6LPQyLF— Emma ⭐ (@EmmaKinema) September 16, 2018
A Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed that the timing of the chronological timeline’s sudden reappearance was just a coincidence. After the announcement, the mood among many Twitter users ranged from delighted to jubilant to ecstatic.
Adding my hot take to the return of chronological timeline hot takes. Much more serendipity to the content & what I'm seeing is more interesting and varied. Optimising algorithms for past behavior certainly drive digital metrics but it risks leading you straight into a fishbowl— Charles Ubaghs (@charlesubaghs) September 19, 2018
The chronological timeline is wonderful. I'm seeing followers that have been hidden from me for ages. The only problem I have is that eventually, twitter stops loading new tweets and I have to start over.— Lisa Harney (@lisaquestions) September 19, 2018
The origins of Twitter’s algorithmically curated timeline date back years, with the platform implementing some of its components gradually. The company first began to officially phase out a chronologically organized timeline in February 2016, when it introduced the algorithmic timeline — in which “top-ranked” tweets, scored by a “relevance model,” were automatically curated to appear first and most frequently. Often, people would see tweets from users they didn’t even follow, above more recent tweets from those they did.
Initially, people could opt-out, but that wasn’t true for long. By early 2017, many users were complaining frequently of seeing tweets from people they didn’t follow, as part of Twitter’s ongoing attempts to recommend content to its audience.
A Twitter spokesperson emphasized to Vox this week that, while the company has restored the chronological timeline option in response to user feedback, its research has shown that people find Twitter more relevant and useful when they’re shown the “best” tweets first.
You might be wondering why being able to view tweets chronologically ever became an issue at all. Who cares what order tweets are displayed in? Aren’t they all just tweets? Well, yes and no.