Twitter at present is updating its app to make it easier to change between the algorithmically programmed Home timeline and the feed that shows the “Latest” tweets. Typically, when customers need to transfer between timelines, they’ve to faucet the “sparkle” icon within the top-right of the display screen, then accomplish that once more to change again. But beginning at present on iOS, tapping that icon will provide the choice to pin each the Home and Latest timelines to your Twitter Home web page, so you’ll be able to as an alternative swipe backwards and forwards between the 2 feeds.
Explains Twitter, the update makes the choice to see latest posts “more visible and intuitive to use.” It additionally reduces confusion by making it easier to see which timeline you’re at present scrolling, the corporate says.
The change comes at a time when there’s been elevated regulatory stress on tech firms associated to their algorithmic recommendation methods and the shortage of transparency round their internal workings. For instance, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers put ahead the Filter Bubble Transparency Act, which might require tech firms to provide a model of their platforms that doesn’t leverage consumer knowledge to make suggestions. The invoice needs to give customers the choice to flip off the tech firm’s recommendation algorithms in the event that they select.
Since then, Instagram promised to re-introduce a chronological feed possibility. (Or technically, a reverse-chronological feed, if we’re being exact.)
Twitter, nevertheless, had already provided such an possibility, although some might not have recognized it existed. This latest change might precisely assist to higher floor the characteristic — the flicker icon sits in the identical place as earlier than — however it may make Twitter itself easier to use.
In addition to supporting consumer alternative, a “Latest” feed can also be the type of instrument that individuals flip to in a breaking information scenario, when the immediacy of data is extra important than an algorithmic suggestion of the “best” content material you’ll have missed. And that’s significantly helpful now amid the Russia-Ukraine warfare, the place persons are counting on social media apps to get the latest information about what’s occurring on the bottom.
Twitter had first began publicly testing this characteristic in October. The firm mentioned suggestions was optimistic so it has determined to ship it extra broadly.
At launch, the characteristic is iOS solely, however it will “soon” roll out to each Android and the net. Pushed for extra specificity on that date, Twitter may solely promise it could be “in the coming weeks.”
