Twitter on Friday said it has introduced a new feature which will allow users to hide replies to their tweets giving them more control over conversations they start. Currently, replies to a particular tweet are visible to everyone, inviting unwanted attention, hate or abuse.
“Everyone should feel safe and comfortable while talking. Earlier, repliers could shift the topic or tone of a discussion and derail what they and their audience wanted to talk about. Twitter tested the option for people to hide replies to their tweets, and learned that the feature is a useful new way to manage conversations,” Twitter said in a blogpost.
A user can choose to hide replies to tweets but everyone will be able to see and engage with hidden replies by tapping the grey icon that will appear on the tweets. So while Twitter is offering more control to its users over the conversations they start, it will also offer transparency.
In its internal survey, Twitter said people mostly hide replies they think are irrelevant, off-topic, or annoying. The new feature is a way to shut out noise; 85% of the people who hide replies are not using block or mute. People were curious to see how public figures like those in politics and journalism would use this update.
In Canada, 27 per cent of people who had their Tweets hidden said they would reconsider how they interact with others in the future. Also, they thought it was a helpful way to manage what they saw, similar to muted keywords. People may want to take further action after they hide a reply, so now Twitter will check to see if they want to also block the replier. Some people even mentioned that they didn’t want to hide replies due to fear of retaliation as the icon remains visible.
Twitter also said it was working on new controls and more clarity around the rules of conversation spaces. Soon, it launches a new hide replies endpoint so developers can build additional conversation management tools.
The option to hide replies is rolling out globally on iOS, Android, Twitter Lite, and Twitter.com.
