#RIPTwitter! Users flip after reports of big change

Nothing may define Twitter so much as the unholy conniption fit its stubbornly hard-to-grow-but-still-wildly-devoted user base throws whenever anything changes on the social network.

Remember when Moments happened? When Twitter decided to have likes instead of favorites?

Those freakouts paled in comparison to the meltdown that occurred on Friday night, after BuzzFeed reported that Twitter plans to introduce a timeline run by an algorithm that prioritizes certain accounts over others, rather than just a real-time feed—y’know, like that other social network does.

Some very well-connected people reported that the feature will be optional.

https://twitter.com/MattNavarra/status/695884656105889792

But since when did the internet let boring facts get in the way of a world-class rage-a-thon? “#RIPTwitter” quickly became the biggest trending topic on the planet as people vented.

https://twitter.com/lifeofanegg/status/695972368817201152

The best part of the whole thing, though, was watching an actual Twitter developer—a man whose job it is to make and understand Twitter!—interact with the network for seemingly the first time in his life, which is a bad sign. Like anyone who gets the hang of the place, he went from baffled outsider to hard-core brawler in about three seconds.

Update: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded to the kerfuffle by promising that real-time tweeting was not going anywhere.