Are Twitter’s birthday balloons broken?

We already know that Twitter wilts like a sad little grape on a vine, but today the party really seems to be over.

Yesterday, Feb. 2, a Twitter user claimed, “TWITTER GOT LOTS OF BIRTHDAY BALLOONS,” adding, “Elon is such a pathetic little man he can’t stand the idea of ​​anyone being happy.” While Musk actually looks like a miserable little man, we had to deal with the allegation about the balloons.

The tweet may have been deleted
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Here’s how the balloon feature usually works: When you log into Twitter, the site asks for your date of birth. When you view your own profile on this date, a note under your bio wishes you “Happy Birthday” and an adorable little animation of colorful balloons floats across the screen (tap PS to pop them). If you’ve made your birthday settings public, the speech bubbles will appear to anyone who visits your profile, along with a message that says “It’s his birthday today!”. Click on the message and the speech bubbles will appear again.

I did a little research and I still see her on desktop in profiles that share her birthday publicly. But in the mobile app, the balloons are gone. And although “Today is her birthday!” is still showing, you cannot click it to see more balloons. Users also report that they don’t see the speech bubble animation when viewing theirs own profile on her birthday.

The only explicable reason for this might be that you have disabled “Reduce Motion” in your accessibility settings. To check the mobile app, go to Settings & Support > Settings & Privacy > Accessibility, Display & Languages ​​> Accessibility > Motion and make sure Reduce Motion is turned off.

To see speech bubbles, make sure you’ve turned off Reduce Motion.
Photo credit: Twitter

If you’ve tried that and the balloons don’t appear for you today, I wish you a happy birthday and encourage you to watch this hour-long animation(Opens in a new window) of cute little balloons to celebrate.