Twitter will display more tweets from users you don't follow.

 

The number of tweets from users you don't follow will increase on Twitter.

More algorithmic recommendations appear to be coming as Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, tinkers with the social network's feature set.

The network was "extending suggestions to all users," according to a message from Twitter's help account on Wednesday. Of course, this is done in accordance with the principle of providing users with the "best" content (Instagram also loves to use this line), but in actuality, incorporating more recommendations into a social feed primes consumers to anticipate more paid content as well. 

Twitter did not share any additional information about the change to recommendations, but it did provide links to an earlier blog post that explains how algorithmic content works and where it may appear. Recommendations "may display in your Home timeline, select locations under the Explore tab, and elsewhere on Twitter," the post states. Right now, selecting the sparkling button in the timeline's upper right corner will allow you to choose between the home feed and the "recent tweets."

We've tweeted into the void to ask Twitter for more clarification, but it's not immediately obvious if the company intends to stream more suggested tweets into the "home" timeline or if this is something more aggressive. Changes that appear to be currently affecting home feeds have already been noted by several users. 

Twitter offers two distinct feeds: "latest tweets," which lists the most recent tweets from the users you follow chronologically; and "home," which compiles the most popular tweets from the users you follow. According to our observations, the latter was primarily a non-chronological collection of tweets from the people we did follow, though it occasionally mixed in some recommendations from outside of our following lists. 

We won't be surprised to see Twitter use heavy-handed recommendations or even modify the default feed in that direction given Musk's penchant for fast implementing significant feature changes (and then turning them back), so we'll keep an eye out for anything significant. 

Prior to Musk, the platform intended to make recommendations more noticeable but changed its mind in response to customer reactions. On Instagram, individuals have expressed similar fatigue at seeing content from users they don't follow clog up their feeds. Serving algorithmically curated content is in the very DNA of TikTok, but many other social platforms must exercise greater caution. 

Apps like Twitter and Instagram have to gradually turn the algorithmic spigot on because they were initially created to let users follow people they already know (or know of). This is done in the hopes that users won't notice any sudden changes. We'll have to wait and see in this scenario.