It looks like it’s going to be another normal week on the bird site: People’s “Next” timelines seem to be flooded with unlabeled retweets from people they do not follow, and many people see a Doge icon where the company’s bird logo used to be.
As for the first, no, your Following timeline isn’t suddenly controlled by the algorithm behind the “For You” timeline. Twitter has simply stopped labeling retweets. Previously, when someone you followed retweeted something, the tweet had a comment above it saying who was responsible for making it appear on your timeline. Now that label seems to have disappeared on the internet, so the tweets look exactly like those of the people you follow.
Clicking on the tweet brings up the retweet tag again, and when you try to reply to it, it still tags the person who retweeted it. That functionality is still there, and the fact that the labels are still on the timeline in the iOS and Android apps, as well as TweetDeck, makes this look more like a bug than an intentional change.
As for the Doge icon that appears on the loading screen and in the top left corner of the web UI, it’s hard to say how that could be be a bug, unless it’s just an April Fool’s joke that showed up two days late. CEO Elon Musk is a well-known pusher of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency and has sometimes had people buy certain pieces of Tesla merchandise with the memecoin. Of course, Doge’s value has skyrocketed since the dog took over Twitter, from less than 8 cents to nearly 9 cents.
Like the retweet labels, the Doge rebranding appears to only apply to Twitter’s web UI, not the apps.
Today it is difficult to say whether this is on purpose. Twitter’s press email automatically responds to requests for comment with a poop emoji and Musk didn’t tweet about the change to retweet labels. He has reposted a meme about the Doge switch, which one of his followers tweeted as a riff on one of Musk’s tweets on Sunday.
Last week, Twitter stopped showing what tweets people responded to, filling our timelines with replies that looked like vague subtweets. Eventually, that change was reverted, but again, it wasn’t clear if Twitter was fixing a bug or reversing an unpopular policy decision.
Update April 3, 2:42 PM ET: Added context on the lawsuit against Musk for promoting Dogecoin.
Update April 3, 3:13 PM ET: Updated to note that Musk has tweeted a meme about the Doge logo.