It seems as though the search feature on Twitter has been disabled again for people without an account. There were several news stories last year explaining that George Hotz (GeoHot), the famous iPhone hacker, had become a Twitter intern. One of his tasks was to remove the login prompt when using Twitter Search.
He, or someone else at the company, did remove the login prompt successfully and it has been possible to search Twitter without logging in, that is, until now. If you go to Twitter now without logging in, you’ll be taken to the Explore feed and there will not be a search box at all. If you press on a tweet, the search option does show up but trying to search with it brings up a login prompt.
In addition, while you’re on the Explore feed, you should see a hashtag icon on the left side next to the word ‘Explore’ but if you resize the browser window on the desktop, this changes back to a search icon for some reason, perhaps it"s a remnant.
The fact that search is no longer usable for those not signed in is pretty interesting. CEO Elon Musk has been actively trying to get people to become Twitter subscribers. He has even removed the legacy blue checkmark from famous people’s accounts in recent days. Search could have been switched off to entice users onto the platform, including those who left due to the controversy after Musk took over.