> unadulterated reverse-chronological order
This is a wonderful phrase. It's hilarious and strange what we've come to value in a feed. What else might we now be taking for granted that ad companies are going to fuck up?
This is a wonderful phrase. It's hilarious and strange what we've come to value in a feed. What else might we now be taking for granted that ad companies are going to fuck up?
Probably most relevant in Twitter's case is that if your feed contains more stuff than you can get to quickly, any curation is probably more useful than simply missing the things that came first or the things that came last. This is why, for example, people who receive a large volume of email often like prioritization or rule-based organization features in their email clients. Like I said, this might not be your situation and a reverse chronological feed might be better for you, but it's not like it's inherently superior. Like so many design choices, it's a trade-off.
And of course you can show ads with a feed no matter what order the feed is in.
Even if these services offered sorting options (most don't, I think), the default is an optimization for time-on-site. Which is to say, when most people's experience of feeds is being manipulated by them, boring old reverse chronological sticks out.