Last September, a ton of users found that Twitter’s image cropping algorithm seemingly had a white bias. In response, Twitter said it would give users control over how images appear on their feeds while the possible bias was being investigated — but then never delivered…until now.
The company announced last night that if you post a single image on your feed, it’ll appear the same as it looked in the composer. The platform is currently testing this feature on its iOS and Android apps.
Now testing on Android and iOS: when you Tweet a single image, how the image appears in the Tweet composer is how it will look on the timeline –– bigger and better. pic.twitter.com/izI5S9VRdX
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) March 10, 2021
While Twitter’s announcement is a welcome one, it might not address bias in all situations. When pointing out the problem last year, users usually posted two images together to show the algorithm always opted to focus on the white person in the picture. So if you repeat the tweet below, you’ll still probably get the same horrible results.
If you’re posting just one image, you’ll be probably able to see the full image in the preview.
Trying a horrible experiment…
Which will the Twitter algorithm pick: Mitch McConnell or Barack Obama? pic.twitter.com/bR1GRyCkia
— Tony “Abolish ICE” Arcieri 🦀 (@bascule) September 19, 2020
Personally, I’m also excited about this new feature because I post a lot of memes on Twitter. And often the app’s algorithm crops out the part that’s the punchline for that meme. So then I have to readjust the dimensions of that image so the meme is properly visible and I get that sweet internet validation from strangers that makes my life complete.
Thanks to this new feature, I wouldn’t have to worry about cropping for a single image. Well done, Twitter.
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Published March 11, 2021 — 09:42 UTC