Science & Tech

This is how you can travel back in time on Twitter

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Let's be honest. In 2018, Twitter isn't great.

Sure it's great for finding hilarious memes, meaningful stories and sharing important information but more often than not it is a hive of negativity and hateful rhetoric.

What if there was a way to be like Marty McFly and turn the clocks back on Twitter, taking back to a simpler time where everyone was a lot more innocent and naive.

Well by some miracle, now you can thanks to an easy hack by Andy Baio, the former chief technology officer for Kickstarter.

All it involves is a short search code, which can take you back to any year in the website's history and was officially launched on March 21, 2006.

It will show the tweets that all the accounts you follow tweeted at that date and in a linear timeline.

The link that Andy shared takes you back to May 25, 2008, but you can change the date in the address bar if you wish.

Simply click on the link below to see what your Twitter timeline would have looked like a decade ago. Just remember to hit 'latest' to see everything in order.

Andy also shared a link to show what Twitter would have looked like only five years ago when the world still seemed like a decent place.

There is also a code for once again viewing Twitter in its correct date and time order, thus removing the popularity and viral algorithm that often blights our timelines.

Once you start delving into this social media time machine, it's astonishing to behold just how many huge accounts, media outlets and brands weren't on Twitter at the time.

Also, it's reassuring to see how innocent many of the tweets were compared to today's output, which seems primarily focused on gaining attention and attracting followers.

The replies to Andy's thread have pointed out some interesting highlights.

Furthermore, it takes you back to the days of tinyurl - and many links no longer seem to work unless you copy and paste them.

It's likely that current Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey doesn't remember tweeting about the 'classic' hip-hop song 'Crank That' by Soulja Boy but you can guarantee that he has been reminded of it in the last few days.

Although this is great fun, we are sure that a lot of people are going to be frantically deleting all their old tweets now...

HT Daily Dot

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