Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a very good idea for time-series data which has a "freshness" aspect. If you started with the beginning of the dataset, February 18, you'd be adding significant weight to values which are comparative to, but no longer representative of, the current state of things on March 16. Not to mention, if it was first-to-last displayed left to right, you may miss the scroll bar and not understand the value of the data bei…
You can still put the most recent data on the right, and zoom in to show the rightmost data points. This is an established practice in stock charts and works well.
My comment was addressing the OP's criticism regarding how tabular data was displayed in the article.