What you need to know
- Elon Musk confirms that Tweet source labels are going away soon.
- Musk feels the labels are pointless, wondering why they're designed in the first place.
- Companies are often called out for tweeting from a competitor's device
Twitter has often been in the news lately, thanks to Elon Musk, who also feels the platform is more alive now than ever. In his recent tweet, Musk, completely unanticipated, announced Tweet source labels are going away.
The move was announced on Monday in a threat that saw Musk apologizing for Twitter's slow performance in many countries. He indicates that the app is utilizing too many Remote procedure calls (RPC)s and that the additional "microservices" are slowing things down.
In addition, Musk indicated that the platform was ridding the "Twitter for iPhone" label found at the bottom of each tweet, calling it "a waste of screen space." He further says that he and the team at Twitter don't know why it is necessary, and he intends to stop including this in tweets, though he has yet to indicate when the change will happen.
And we will finally stop adding what device a tweet was written on (waste of screen space & compute) below every tweet. Literally no one even knows why we did that …November 14, 2022
On the contrary, the Twitter help center clearly explains the purpose of Tweet source labels.
"Tweet source labels help you better understand how a Tweet was posted. This additional information provides context about the Tweet and its author. If you don't recognize the source, you may want to learn more to determine how much you trust the content."
That said, there were several instances where people or accounts were ridiculed for the device the tweets were coming from. The popular labels often bring controversies are Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. Android Central's Shruti Shekar points out in her 'Twitter for iPhone' vs. 'Twitter for Android' article how people chastise others for this label and why it shouldn't matter where people tweet from.
Not long ago, Google Pixel (@GooglePixel_US) posted a tweet that showcased "Twitter for iPhone" despite being a Google-powered official account. Netizens started ridiculing the poor sap who posted the tweet from their iPhone.
Twitter for iPhone police 👮♀️ @MKBHD pic.twitter.com/f7ayNZBRMAOctober 20, 2022
The tweet source labels aren't all bad, apart from the above-outlined ridiculing. That's because several other labels come into play. It includes Twitter for the web, and Twitter for Advertisers, to name a few. For example, the later label implies that the posted tweet had come through a Twitter Ads Composer. Similarly, we often see 'Promoted' labels, indicating it's being promoted by advertisers.
Aside from these, some users, be they on Android devices or iPhone owners, often use a third-party Twitter client, and the same would be reflected in the source label category.
All said, despite how helpful (or hilarious) you may find the labels, it seems they are subjected to go away, following many of Twitter's former employees out the door.
