getty image / pixabay composite
Much like with every other social media platform (especially Instagram), users of Twitter long for the good old days when the people and the content they subscribed to appeared in their feed in chronological order.
Apparently, counted among those people are none other than Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. You know, the one guy who could actually give the people what they want.
Tweeting on Wednesday, Jack Dorsey provided a workaround for users who miss tweets from the people they follow appearing in chronological order, and no, it has nothing to do with a change made by his company.
“I used @getvicarious to create and sync a list of all accounts I’m following, set that list to be reverse chron, named it ‘Latest’ and pinned it, and now I can quickly swipe between ranked (algorithm) and all tweets as they happen (inspired by an idea from team),” Dorsey tweeted.
I used @getvicarious to create and sync a list of all accounts I’m following, set that list to be reverse chron, named it “Latest” and pinned it, and now I can quickly swipe between ranked (algorithm) and all tweets as they happen
(inspired by an idea from team) pic.twitter.com/ZfSg9pGeds
— jack (@jack) August 12, 2021
Does he not read Twitter? He needed his team to make this suggestion to him? And why are they suggesting to him that he use a third party hack rather than just making it a real life option on, you know, Twitter?!
It’s not like Twitter’s users haven’t been complaining, loudly, for years about Twitter’s convoluted algorithmically weighted system of displaying tweets on users’ timelines. But hey, we did get a brand new font this week and they switched the colors on the “follow” and “following” buttons, which didn’t at all confuse Twitter users even more than they already were.
Everyone's appalled by the new font, but I find the inversion of the follow/following button colors considerably more execrable; just a completely intuitive, unnecessary change to the UI's visual language
— Prester John-Boy (@DesidErratum) August 12, 2021
new twitter colors giving me so much anxiety cos the inverted follow buttons looks like ive unfollowed all mutuals
— reed (@rueghost) August 13, 2021
Needless to say, those were not the changes Twitter users had hoped to see. Combine that with Jack Dorsey’s odd recommendation of using Vicariously to see tweets in chronological order and loads of people were nonplussed, and many were more than a little angry.
I'm going to fight this man. https://t.co/6UIhzCGTfD
— Quite Baffled (@imsoconfused42) August 13, 2021
Cool you found a way to hack Twitter to make Twitter like it used to be when it was useful
— Fired from Vivid for pitching "Bone of Sinterest" (@RuckCohlchez) August 13, 2021
Scenario:
You are the CEO of a social media company.
Your design team launches the most god awful font and UX changes imaginable wyd?
— Jacob Franek (@panekkkk) August 12, 2021
Hey @jack that is kinda what the rest of us always wanted before your algorithms fucked it up.
Tweets of people we follow, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.
What i get is a senseless jumble THAT GETS RE-ORGANIZED MINUTE BY MINUTE, & depositing me randomly higher in my timeline.
— SirFox (@DemonBob_Badman) August 12, 2021
Pro-tip for businesses: if your CEO is having to create workarounds to improve functionality of the app that he OWNS, you *probably* aren't doing that great of a job on it... https://t.co/hYXX7PBop4
— the 99 gecs that don't believe in you (@turpywurpy) August 13, 2021
So much sarcasm and venom. Do you think there’s any chance Jack Dorsey actually read any of these responses and will do something positive to address them? Or is he too busy trying to make his social media platform even more difficult to use and understand?
https://twitter.com/HSPRSa/status/1425674691600019457