An increasing number of complaints lodged by Twitter users have brought forward a curious issue with the social network’s timeline.
Retweets made by people not being followed by a user are appearing on the timeline, courtesy of a bug that mislabels the “social proof” tag on Retweets. It is worth noting that this bug affects Android users only.
This extraneous content is understandably undesirable for a majority of users, and complaints regarding clogged timelines are rampant.
why do i keep getting randos i’m not following retweeting themselves on my timeline??
— z a c h (@unktions) 31 January 2019
Seriously @Twitter , why am I seeing these? I’m not following these people and their tweets are clogging up my timeline. pic.twitter.com/5RJ4TrjLBs
— Graze ⭐Meme Star⭐ (@GrazeTwitch) 31 January 2019
@TwitterSupport Why is my timeline full of users I’m not following retweeting themselves?
— christian cain (@TN_WINS) 1 February 2019
A major source of confusion was the absence of a response from the @TwitterSupport account to all the complaints, which might have raised concerns over the algorithm or the recommendation system itself.
While talking to TechCrunch, Twitter claimed that the Retweets popping up on the timeline are from people who are actually known by the user, but since their social proof label is all awry, the Retweets look out of place. The company has also stated that the bug has been live for a few days now, and its engineers are working on fixing it.
Twitter has been known to let relatively irrelevant content appear on your timeline, like posts that tell you that several people have shared the same link, but adding random posts is a first.
For now, Twitter advises that you should tap on the downward-pointing arrow on the right side of the tweet if you want to see lesser content like this.
