"Twitter will now show you the user’s own Tweets, WITHOUT the Retweets. It works the same on desktop or mobile."
Visited someone’s Twitter profile page and found it’s full of Retweets? Pain in the posterior, innit? You visit someone’s page because you want to know about them – not a mass of random accounts either they, or worse, their auto-bot, have chosen to momentarily highlight…
It wouldn’t be so bad if all Twitter users Retweeted for the good of their followers. But many do it more for their own benefit than anyone else's. Some people Retweet to ingratiate themselves to others or attract attention. Some Retweet for self-promotion - when someone compliments them, for instance. Some Retweet for reasons of social compliance, etiquette or friendship. Some Retweet to keep their accounts active when they don't have anything to Tweet themselves. Some Retweet for money.
And some, let's say, less well-behaved Twitter users, go heavy on the Retweets in order to bury their own Tweets and make it near-impossible for profile visitors to observe their behaviour. True, some badly-behaved Twitter users do delete their Tweets, but others simply use a Retweet bot to keep hiding their unpleasant interactions under a deluge of ‘filler’.
How do you make a decision on whether you’re comfortable following someone if all you can see is Retweets? If you can't see past those Retweets, might you give a badly-behaved user the benefit of the doubt?
METHOD
Well, there's no need to guess. You can eliminate all the Retweets from a Twitter user’s feed… And it's easy: just type this into the Twitter Search box…
from:@username
Change the username to that of the person whose Tweets you want to view.
Twitter will now show you the user’s own Tweets, without the Retweets. For my example, as captured below, I entered from:@NRGCult into the Search box. It works the same on desktop or mobile…
To see the Tweets in chronological order, hit the 'Latest' tab.
You should, however, be aware that after a username change, Twitter may not return tweets posted under the previous username(s). Account protections can interfere with this type of search too – even after a protected account reverts to public status. But in most cases it’s a great way to cut through the bloat of heavy retweeting and find out what sort of person a Twitter user really is.
This post was last updated in February 2021.