Twitter’s Timeline Algorithm Changes are Terrible

Mike Murray
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

I wanted to provide Twitter feedback on their timeline algorithm changes which had been rolled out over the last 3–6 months, but the form only allows for 500 characters, so I’ve copy/pasted my feedback below.

This was written quickly and informally.


I want to give some feedback on your feed algorithm changes.

Just want to let you know that I HATE the algorithm change that now treats ‘Likes’ more similar to ‘Retweets,’ and broadcasts when I @ reply someone on other people’s timeline.

If I @ someone with a message, I don’t want it to necessarily be displayed to everyone. The old system worked where it only displayed if you follow both people. For instance, I might @ a business or politician to share my opinion on a service or issue (not something I would DM, especially to a public figure), and I *don’t want that to be on my public timeline*. If someone wants to go through the work of clicking into my profile and reading my Replies to businesses, sure, they can, but it’s another thing when those are broadcast to people on their feed as if they’re typical tweets.

For the love of God, likes are not retweets, stop doing this

Further, with “Likes.” Likes are not retweets and they shouldn’t be treated as public retweets. Likes have historically been a mix of “Favorite,” “Bookmark,” or “Endorse,” but not “retweet.” Retweets generally carries the sense of a full endorsement. A like, on the other hand, can mean many different things, but if somebody wanted to publicly endorse a statement or tweet, they’d use retweet, not like. The affect of this is so bizarre. I have one person who I follow who is a casual acquaintance. We talk about fantasy football or something during football season, we’re acquaintances but we don’t really know each other. For whatever reason, Twitter thinks he and I must be best buds because every tweet that he likes shows up in my timeline… Dozens and dozens a day. I’m sure if he knew that his likes were being treated as retweets, he’d stop liking most of these posts. I generally enjoy reading his tweets, but I’ve thought about unfollowing him because my Twitter timeline is inundated with tweets that he likes, and I’m sure if he knew that his likes were being broadcast out to other people’s timelines, then he’d stop liking many of the posts.

The bigger affect, though, is that I now don’t use your platform as often because I can’t trust how you’re going to display my content. In the past, I could trust how my content would be displayed.

  • Retweets were public broadcasts to my followers
  • Likes were semi-private endorsements, favorites, or bookmarks of a post that were largely between me and the original poster.
  • @ replies were semi-private between two parties unless a third party followed both parties.

This was a predictable system. Today, I often use ‘like’ as a sort of ‘bookmark’ so I can go back later, go through my like list, and find something that I checked off to then look into it later, like for instance, a new JavaScript framework or a long form article, or I’ll like something on my phone with the intention of pulling it up when I’m at my computer to read it. Recently I liked a post about some random CSS Grid or JS tutorial, and a coworker who follows me had this appear in their timeline and told me that it wasn’t a good tutorial to promote … The thing is, to me I wasn’t promoting it I was bookmarking it for later to check out, but for him because it appeared in his feed, it looked like I was promoting it. That sucks. What’s worse is if the material I’m ‘liking’ is not something technical, but say something political. For instance, if there is a long form OpEd in the Washington Post or New York Times, I might ‘like’ it as a sort of bookmark or citation intending to read it later or save it for some other use, only to have that article potentially be broadcasts to my timeline as if I am endorsing it. I was originally against renaming “Favorites” to “Likes” because I thought that these were two distinct behaviors, and it opened up more opportunity for misinterpretation, but now, it’s much worse because a ‘Like’ might show up on someone else’s feed as if I am endorsing it or encouraging someone else to share the viewpoint of the author. Sure, someone could go and click into all of my ‘likes’ in the past and see them chronicled, but that would have taken a lot of effort. When these show up similar to how a tweet or retweet show up on someones feed, and it does so unpredictably and at different rates based on obscure user behavior or relationship metrics, it undermines the integrity of the system.

There is no trust in the system anymore because it’s not predictable — I have no idea if my “Likes” will appear as a ‘retweet’ for most people or as a ‘like’ for some other people or as something else altogether. It’s undermining the credibility of the platform.

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Mike Murray

Written by

Front-end Engineer for a software company in Massachusetts. I don’t write often, but when I do it will be about JavaScript, WordPress, beer, or Fantasy Football

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