Twitter’s uncurated feed certainly has some downsides, and I can see some algorithmic improvements that would make it easier for early users to adopt the service, but they’d potentially be chopping off the very—sometimes magical—ability of mature Twitter to surface from the network. And the key to this power isn’t the reverse chronology but rather the fact that the network allows humans to exercise free judgment on the worth of content, without strong algorithmic biases. That cumulative, networked freedom is what extends the range of what Twitter can value and surface, and provides some of the best experiences of Twitter. ...

What else will a curated feed optimize for? It will almost certainly look more like television since there is a reason television looks like television: that’s what advertisers like. There will be more celebrities. There will be more pithy quotes. There will be even more outrage, and even more lovable, fluffy things (both are engaging, and remember, algorithms will optimize for engagement). There will be more sports and television events. There will be less random, weird and otherwise obscure content being surfaced by the collective, networked judgement of the users I choose to follow.