Twitter will no longer show from which device a tweet was sent

The new owner of Twitter and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, announced that Twitter will no longer show from which device a tweet was sent, whether it’s an iPhone, Android phone, or the Twitter website on a computer. “In the end we will stop adding on which device a tweet was writtenMusk tweeted, adding that he thinks the feature is a “waste of screen real estate.”

Twitter has always shown which device a tweet was sent from to give context to the situation from which it was issued. As of this week, it won’t show it again, though it’s hard to know if that’s a permanent move as Musk got into a whirlwind of changes that later returned to the platform last week.

However, before the appreciation of the richest man in the world, the answer immediately appeared on Twitter as to why this function “was there”.

Hashtag creator Chris Messina argued that showing which device you tweeted from was a good way to give exposure to formerly third-party Twitter clients like Tweetie and TweetDeck. These platforms are usually used by companies or professional community managers to be able to have multiple functions as multiple simultaneously open accounts, columns, and so on.

In addition, it has provided and provides a “status indicatorto show whether a tweet was sent from a desktop or mobile device. And former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey has come out to say that that assessment was correct.

Musk’s tweet saying “we literally don’t understand why this feature is there”:

Messina’s response, along with Dorsey:

The official explanation

In addition to all this, the explanation of the reason for creating this feature can be found on the official Twitter page in its Help Center, where it is indicated that these post source tags “help to better understand how a tweet was published” and provide additional information to the user about the context of the publication and its author.

Additionally, the social network believes that etiquette information may be a factor to consider so that people can decide who they trust within the platform. These can be of three types: the first is “Twitter for iPhone”, “Twitter for Android” or “Twitter for Websites”.

However, there is a fourth category called “Twitter for advertisers” which identifies sponsored or paid content to have greater visibility on the social network.

Sometimes, however, the labels do not correspond to any of these platforms and instead appear the names of other applications outside of Twitter that act as publication managers such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Sprinklr, ListenFirst, Meltwater, among others that are also used as a way to produce advertising content.

And finally, as several users have pointed out: it is fun. As can be seen in this post by actress Gal Gadot promoting a Huawei phone from an iPhone device: