Twitter’s Mobile App Timeline is a Clusterf*ck

I had to leave work early on Wednesday and with just over a quarter left of the Thunder vs the Warriors game I thought I’d stream the rest of the contest on my commute. Sadly, I had no such luck as the NBA app doesn’t stream video on Android N at the moment (sadface).

So I decided to follow along on Twitter.

I’m rubbish at curating Twitter lists (the concept and execution is pretty obtuse, which doesn’t help) but I follow a bunch of great NBA Twitter profiles, so my timeline lights up during these Conference Finals playoff games.

Instead of using Falcon Pro, my go-to 3rd party Twitter client, I thought I’d give the native Twitter app a shot to enjoy those sweet, juicy in-line Vines people share during the game. What I experienced instead, was an avalanche of fail as Twitter bombarded me with everything BUT the tweets I was interested in.

Let’s take a quick look.

After one scroll I hit my first ad. I don’t mind ads in the timeline – I get it. But this thing is fucking HUGE, taking up 61% of the feed.

That's a lot of ad

One scroll later and I’m interrupted again, this time by a Who To Follow carousel.

Poo to follow

A couple of scrolls later and I’ve seen one or two NBA related tweets. Great, I’m getting in to it… but then this:

Are you for fucking real?

That’s right, Twitter has now taken over my entire timeline to display 8 posts that I ‘might like’. Hey motherfuckers, you know what I might like? To see a chronological list of tweets in my timeline so I can follow what’s happening in the fucking OKC game.

So OK, I scroll twice and then, SURPRISE:

Again. Great.

Which, again, I get the need for ads but, Twitter, you have completely inundated my timeline with piles of shit I didn’t ask for to the point of driving me out of your app to search out another way to experience the game.

This was a horrible experience. Genuinely horrible. And this is the primary window into Twitter for most users.

The level of weird distain Twitter has for its users is genuinely baffling.

Back to Falcon for me.

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