Twitter Bug Makes it Look Like Random Retweets are Appearing in your Timeline
Some Twitter users have been complaining that tweets that were retweeted by users they don’t follow are now displaying in their timeline. The issue, thankfully, is not related to a new Twitter algorithm, as some had worried. Instead, the company said that a bug affecting Android users was mislabeling the “social proof” tag on Retweets.
This is the section of the Retweet that tells you who, among the users you already follow, had retweeted your post in question.
The company said that the social proof label is wrong, so the Android users were observing tweets that looked like they had been retweeted by people they don’t know.
Twitter states the Retweets that showed up were actually tweeted by users the people knew, but their social proof label was wrong, which made them look out of place. The designers of Twitter are aware of the query and are working to fix this now. The bug has been on for a few days, Twitter also confirmed.
The company’s @TwitterSupport account had not yet replied to people asking about this issue, which may have caused some user confusion. After all, Twitter has been known to put what some consider irrelevant information in the timeline — like posts that show you when many users you follow have now all followed another Twitter user or posts that show you that some people have shared the same link, for instance. But even in those cases, that was in-network action — not something like placing random retweets in your main feed.
Until the bug is fixed, Twitter users who don’t like the seemingly random retweets can tap on down arrow to tell Twitter they want to see less content like this.