Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Monday that Twitter’s bringing back the much-loved and original ‘reverse chronological order theme’ for the Twitter news feed. You can enable the reverse chronological theme by making setting changes.
🆕 if you turn off timeline ranking in settings today, you’ll see all the tweets from people you follow in reverse chronological order…no “in case you missed it” or tweets the people you follow “liked”. https://t.co/F9qOg9aC22
— jack (@jack) September 18, 2018
Twitter is also working on providing users with a way to easily toggle between the two different themes i.e. a timeline of tweets most relevant to you and a timeline of all the latest tweets. To change to the reverse chronological order timeline, go to settings on the twitter, then select privacy option, go to the content section and uncheck the box that says “Timeline- show the best tweets first”. Twitter also removed the ‘in case you missed it’ section from the settings.
5/ Meanwhile, today we updated the “Show the best Tweets first” setting. When off, you’ll only see Tweets from people you follow in reverse chronological order. Previously when turned off, you’d also see “In case you missed it” and recommended Tweets from people you don’t follow.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 17, 2018
The Reverse Chronological theme was Twitter’s original content presentation style, much before it made the ‘top tweets algorithm’ as a default option, back in 2016. When Twitter announced that it was changing its timeline so that it wouldn’t show the tweets in chronological order anymore, a lot of people were unhappy. In fact, people despised the new theme so much that a new hashtag #RIPTwitter was trending back then. Twitter with its new algorithm in 2016 focussed mainly on bringing the top, most happening, tweets to light.
But, a majority of Twitter users felt differently. People enjoyed the simpler reverse-chron Twitter where people could get real-time updates from their close friends, family, celebrities, etc, not the twitter that shows only the most relevant tweets stacked together.
Twitter defended the new approach as it tweeted yesterday that “We’ve learned that when showing the best Tweets first, people find Twitter more relevant and useful. However, we’ve heard feedback from people who at times prefer to see the most recent Tweets”.
Also, Twitter has been making a lot of changes recently after Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding Twitter’s algorithms and content monitoring. Twitter mentioned that they want people to have more control over their timeline.
We want you to have control over what you see in your timeline. Soon, you’ll have even more control with the option to provide additional feedback on Tweets when you have the "Show the best Tweets first" setting turned on. pic.twitter.com/cvNZUDZqjL
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 18, 2018
Public reaction to this new change has been largely positive with a lot of people criticizing the company’s Top Tweet timeline.
Why are social networks so obsessed with creating tools that "show you the best content first"? I know how I want to see the content (chronologically) and how much of it do I want to see (all of it). I have no need of an algorithm that thinks it knows better than me.
— Case (@_Case) September 18, 2018
Finally! Your forced tweets on me have zero interest to me. Your judgement in my interests is a joke. Please just post the tweets in the order they are posted of the accounts I follow. Also stop the suggestions to follow accounts. I know who I want to follow.
— TerryB 🇨🇦 (@terryb600) September 18, 2018
I never asked for that. Don’t want it. Better the way it was before—simply chronological.
— Antony (@smithant) September 18, 2018
How about rather than deciding what I might like for me, you show me tweets from the people I have chosen to follow, in the order the tweets have been made. Simples!
— Allie Coyne (@alliecoyne) September 18, 2018
How about you put the timeline and notifications back the way they were several years ago, when it was in chronological order, using only tweets (or retweets) from people I’m following, with no “promoted tweets” or “what you missed” crap, etc clogging the timeline??
— Michael Z 🔭📡⚾️🖖🏻 (@fizzixrat) September 18, 2018
One common pattern observed is that people brought up Facebook a lot while discussing this new change.
FB has become essentially useless due to this. I don't see the posts I want to see (I mean it doesn't even show me half the stuff my wife posts, or shows it to me days later) and it seems like my own posts are barely ever shown to anyone as well. Nearly no point in using it now.
— Case (@_Case) September 18, 2018
NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!
I HATE @Facebook doing that!!!! I want to see ALL of MY tweets and ALL of the tweets by people I follow with NONE of their "Likes" of strangers tweets polluting my feed!!!!
I am PERFECTLY capable of scrolling!!!
— 💙 Depoetic (@Depoetic) September 18, 2018
I don't want you controlling it at all. Give people controls don't make decisions for them. Otherwise you are just Facebook and I don't come to you to be Facebook. Your changes basically stink. And making Twitter less, not more relevant to me.
— Kristine Schachinger (@schachin) September 18, 2018
Twitter seems to have dodged a bullet by giving back to its users what they truly want.
Read Next
Twitter’s trying to shed its skin to combat fake news and data scandals, says Jack Dorsey
Facebook, Twitter open up at Senate Intelligence hearing, committee does ‘homework’ this time
Jack Dorsey to testify explaining Twitter algorithms before the House Energy and Commerce Committee
