Wednesday 20 August 2014 9:19 am | Updated: Friday 07 June 2019 5:51 am

Twitter updates: Favourites to appear in timelines and gory photos of death to be removed

If you're on Twitter, you may have noticed a change.

A new update means that from now on, tweets favourited by people you follow will occasionally appear in your timeline – whether you agree with the sentiment or not.

Twitter began testing the update two days ago, and it received a pretty hostile response at first, with this kind of comment fairly typical:

Putting favourites right in the main twitter feed is going to be ruined by people like me who favourite zillions of tweets. Sorry.

— Jon Gold (@jongold) August 19, 2014

But unperturbed, it now seems Twitter has decided to push ahead and make the changes permanent after a section on its website titled "What's in your home timeline?" now mentions the appearance of tweets by accounts you don't follow.

Twitter’s website now states:

When we identify a Tweet, an account to follow, or other content that’s popular or relevant, we may add it to your timeline.

This means you will sometimes see Tweets from accounts you don’t follow. We select each Tweet using a variety of signals, including how popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with it. Our goal is to make your home timeline even more relevant and interesting.

The new Twitter timelines will therefore represent a shift to a more Facebook-like model in which feeds aren't totally controlled by the user and will instead feature recommended content based on collected data.

This time last year, Twitter was a text-only medium, but in October 2013, the company added images and videos added to timelines.

Earlier today the social networking platform said it would remove images and videos of the deceased at the request of immediate family members.

Twitter spokesman Nu Wexley issued a statement via Twitter that "in order to respect the wishes of loved ones", images of the deceased – from when critical injury occurs to the moments before or after death – would be removed, but he added that any request would be weighed up against the public interest.

Requests to have images removed can be sent to privacy@twitter.com.