Twitter to empower users with 'who can reply' feature

Twitter users have reshaped the way people voice their opinions and take a stand on issues important to them. However, the social media platform has also been a place for hate-mongering and numerous anti-social trolling behaviour. 

With a new update, which is presently in the testing phase, Twitter users will have greater control over who can actually reply to you.   

If and when this feature comes through (Twitter is initially rolling out this feature only for few across the globe), users will be able to choose from ‘allow replies from everyone’, ‘people you follow’, or ‘only people you @ mention’. As per Twitter’s reveal in January, this feature would be coming to the platform sometime this year.

Twitter put out an official tweet on the new development:

When a user chooses to limit replies for a tweet and ‘excludes’ a particular Twitter user, that person will be unable to reply. At the same time, the tweet will be still visible to others and they could like and retweet it. 

Another nifty feature that is expected to come soon, is that tweets will be labeled denoting who can reply. Labeling of tweets that have limited reply settings enabled will let users easily identify them. 

According to Twitter, ‘only a limited group of people globally’ on Android, iOS, and the web app are part of the test to restrict replies.

Tweets with the label will look like this image:

When the choice rests with users, letting them control  ‘who can reply to my tweet’, it could bring down incidences of abuse and harassment on social media. Not unlike real life, users engaging with like-minded people or ‘safe’ users online could essentially keep trolls at bay.  

Via The Verge

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