Twitter has been heavily criticized for switching from a chronological timeline to a new feed featuring suggested tweets. The social network then created an option so that users can always see the latest tweets by default, however this is no longer the case. The new Twitter update no longer allows users to access the chronological timeline by default.
The update is now rolling out to Twitter users on iOS and will soon be available on Android and the web. As detailed by Twitter via its @TwitterSupport profile, users will now have two tabs at the top of the app to switch between Home (with suggested tweets) and Recent Tweets.
So, although users can still view tweets in chronological order, users can't access them by default because the Home tab will always appear first.
To set it, users need to tap on the sparkle icon in the top right corner and you will see an option to pin "Recent timeline." After that, you will see the "Home" and "Recent Tweets" tabs at the top of the iOS app.
Twitter says the feature was first available on iOS and will be coming to Android and the web soon. The company started testing the feature in October.
After setting up a new feature, you can't make the chronological feed the default. Instead, you can just have "Home" as the default or set the two tabs "Home" and "Recent Tweets."
A Twitter Spokesperson for Shaokyi Amdo confirmed the changes, although they suggested that the social network could change them again in the future.
"The "Home" feed will be pinned first by default for now. He confirmed there is no way to pin the "Latest Tweet" first by default," he quoted The Verge, Monday (14/3/2022).
Now, on iOS whenever a user wants to scroll through a feed in reverse order as it was always done before, the user must first check to see if the user is viewing the correct feed. Thankfully, at least for now, "Latest Tweet" can still be the default on the web and iOS.
Twitter first started rolling out its algorithmic timeline in 2016 and introduced a sparkle icon to let you switch between algorithmic and reverse chronological feeds in 2018.