Twitter has announced a new feature to limit or disable replies on tweets.
The social network, which has faced significant criticism in recent years over its handling of trolling and abuse, confirmed that it was looking for ways to reduce toxicity on the platform.
One of its solutions is to allow users to choose who can reply to their tweets.
As first reported by TechCrunch, users will be able to select from one of four reply options: Global, allowing anyone to reply, Group, only allowing followers to reply, Panel, only people who are tagged in a tweet can reply, and fourth not allowing replies, the “Statement” tweet.
Twitter made the announcement during CES 2020, where company executive Kayvon Beykpour revealed that the company wanted to give consumers more control over their social networking experience.
Speaking at the event, he said: “The primary motivation is control. We want to build on the theme of authors getting more control and we’ve thought that there are many analogues of how people have communications in life.”
“Right now, public conversation on Twitter is you tweet something everyone in the world will see and everyone can reply, or you can have a very private conversation in a DM. So there’s an entire spectrum of conversations that we don’t see on Twitter yet.”
The company has not confirmed a timeline for the new disable or limit tweet replies option, but did confirm that the first rollout would be to a select group of users for testing purposes.
That means there’s no guarantee this feature will make it to the public build of the app and desktop experience, though based on initial reaction, we expect this to be a popular feature.
Are you pleased to hear about this new feature? Do you think the social network is doing enough to combat trolling and bullying? Let us know your thoughts and check back soon for more technology news from the team here at AppleMagazine, every week.