Jack Dorsey Shares His Latest Discovery: Twitter

As any Twitter user knows, the site is constantly tinkering with itself, much to the chagrin of its millions of users. New features have been tested and mostly reviled throughout the site's history, including a redesign this week which made a good portion of its users think they were having a stroke.

my twitter typeface slightly changed and it feels like i had a stroke.

— Patrick Cosmos (@veryimportant) August 11, 2021

Yesterday, in what was either a brilliant troll or a shockingly oblivious update, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared a helpful Twitter hack that makes Twitter… Twitter.

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

Specifically, Jack's hack makes Twitter the old version of Twitter, the one where tweets from people you follow would show up on the timeline in chronological order, as opposed to the algorithmically-driven model that is current Twitter now, where suggested posts, popular posts, posts from people you don't know or follow, posts that are somewhat related to topics you might be interested in, and new posts all show up on the timeline in seemingly random order.

The irony of Twitter's CEO sharing a workaround to give users the "classic" experience most actually want was not lost on the site's userbase, who were convinced Dorsey's tip was proof that those in charge of Twitter's design don't actually know what they're doing.

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

— it's the wig snapping sis for me (@turpywurpy) August 13, 2021

Is he making fun of us https://t.co/WKw7YijKSz

— Abraham Riesman אברהם ריסמאַן (@abrahamjoseph) August 12, 2021

this was called a "feed" before every platform decided to forcibly sort everything with an algorithm https://t.co/0orQMVWE7k

— Pangaea (@Pangaea__) August 13, 2021

15 years after inventing Twitter, Jack Dorsey invents Twitter https://t.co/dvtX3FAoB7

— single transferable boat (@jhermann) August 12, 2021

This guy just invented Twitter again https://t.co/S8bUJqjeqH

— luke (@lukeoneil47) August 12, 2021

For what its worth, the tip does work, according to those who've tried it, so if you want to get the Twitter experience that was promised in the site's halcyon days, you can.

As for the recent change in Twitter's follow button design, we're still baffled.

The new Twitter UX just loaded into my browser, and yeah this reversal of filled/unfilled follow buttons is unintuitive as hell. pic.twitter.com/8ZnF8sKRNI

— Brother Q. (FKA Andray Domise) (@andraydomise) August 11, 2021