Twitter has been able to go through many ups and downs throughout its life. However, one of the worst has been the purchase of the social network by Elon Musk. Whoever promised to restore greatness to the social network is actually destroying it from within. There are already several bad decisions that it has made (increasing advertising, payment functions, etc.), but, without a doubt, one of the worst is yet to come, and that is that very soon we will no longer be able to read tweets in chronological order.
Currently we can read Twitter in two ways. The first one is from the “For you” page, a page where, using the algorithm, the social network shows you, among many ads, all the messages that may be relevant to you, both from people you follow and from users. that you do not follow If the algorithm thinks something might interest you, it shows it to you directly. And the second, and most logical, is, among many ads and promoted messages, to be able to read all the messages in chronological order.
Well, this second form is going to disappear.
Twitter bets on following the Tik-Tok model
iOS users have noticed that, after the latest app update, the star at the bottom that allowed us to switch between one reading mode or another has disappeared. Now, in the app’s new interface we can only find two tabs: the first one, “For you”, where we can see all kinds of nonsense content that the algorithm recommends, and the other, “Following”, where we The messages of our followers will appear, ordered, of course, according to the algorithm.
The idea is clear: Elon Musk wants us to spend more time on his social network, and for this he is going to show us all kinds of junk, random content and from people we don’t know, to keep us hooked. The technique is very similar to the one that TikTok uses to make us scroll over and over again: it shows us content considered interesting by the algorithm, and it tests different types of content to see if we interact with it or if we are not interested.
For now, only on iOS
At the moment, this change seems to have only reached the Twitter app for iOS. If we are Android users we can continue using the same chronology and the same navigation as always. However, we can be sure that this change will also reach Google’s operating system. And surely it will also reach the web interface, where the possibility of following the messages in chronological order will be eliminated.
Of course, the “For you” mode is the one that comes by default whenever we open the app, so, like it or not, we will always see recommendations from the algorithm, and the only way to avoid it is to manually switch to “Following” mode once. and again and again…
Twitter has very serious problems, and these changes only infuriate the usual users, who are increasingly abandoning the social network. Soon there will be no one left to recommend messages to.
