Monah Mahmoud

By 2100 there could be 4.9bn dead users on Facebook. So who controls our digital legacy after we have gone? Esther Earl never meant to tweet after she died. On 25 August 2010, the 16-year-old internet vlogger died after a four-year battle with thyroid cancer. In her early teens, Esther had gained a loyal following online, where she posted about her love of Harry Potter, and her illness. Then, on 18 February 2011 – six months after her death – Esther posted a message on her Twitter account, @crazycrayon. “It’s currently Friday, January 14 of the year 2010. just wanted to say: I seriously hope that I’m alive when this posts,”  she wrote , adding an emoji of a smiling face in sunglasses. Her mother, Lori Earl from Massachusetts, tells me Esther’s online friends were “freaked out” by the tweet. “I’d say they found her tweet jarring because it was unexpected,” she says. Earl doesn’t know which service her daughter used to schedule the tweet a year in advance, but believes it...

After announcing it back in September, and rolling out an initial test with selected users last month, Twitter is now bringing it's new 'Sparkle' button to all users, which will enable everyone to easily opt out of the algorithm-defined feed and see the most recent tweets from those they follow first. As demonstrated here, the new button will be present in the top right of the app, where the tweet compose button used to be. When you tap on it, your timeline will switch to show the latest tweets, as opposed to those the algorithm defines as the most likely to be of interest. Tap it again, and you'll go back to "Top tweets" - the algorithm-determined feed. The option will begin rolling out to iOS users from today, with Android and web to follow soon. Twitter's algorithm has long been a cause of frustration for users, with some arguing from its initial implementation back in 2016 that an algorithm ranking of tweets runs totally in counter to wh...