Prepare to say goodbye to device labels on Twitter.
Photo: Ravi Sharma/Unsplash CC
Over the past few years, several celebrities have been caught promoting flagship Android phones on Twitter, tweeting from their iPhones. That may soon be a thing of the past thanks to a change proposed by Elon Musk.
The new Twitter owner plans to remove the “Twitter for iPhone” or “Twitter for Android” labels at the bottom of each tweet.
Twitter device labels may soon be a thing of the past
Musk says the label is a “waste of screen space and compute” and that “literally no one knows” why Twitter added it in the first place. Without the label, you cannot determine the device type that the tweet originated from. The world’s richest man is making these changes and shutting down “microservices” bloatware to improve Twitter’s loading times.
@sampulla And we’ll finally stop adding at the bottom of every tweet what device the tweet was written on (a waste of screen space and compute). Nobody really knows why we did this…
Twitter removed the device label from its platform in 2012 but reintroduced it in 2018. And it made an immediate impact. In the same year, Wonder Woman Gal Gadot was caught using an iPhone to tweet a paid advertisement for the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. And the shame is that she was the brand ambassador of Huawei back then.
In another instance, Oprah Winfrey tweeted from her iPhone praising Microsoft’s Surface line of tablets. Samsung has also been caught promoting its Galaxy devices on Twitter using an iPhone. However, Apple has also found itself on the other end of the stick. In a slip-up in December 2018, Apple Music’s official account replied to a tweet from Ariana Grande using an Android device.
Musk proposes several changes to Twitter
It is unclear when Musk plans to remove the device label from the social media platform. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has proposed several changes to the platform, including providing $8 verification badges to Twitter Blue customers. Twitter temporarily halted Blue Subscriptions due to ill-conceived comments.
