The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event is happening this week in Las Vegas, and among the announcements that came today was news from Twitter that users will soon have more control over who can view and reply to their tweets.
Twitter’s new “conversation participants” setting on the “compose” screen will let you restrict that element, which gives users the ability to tamp down rampant abusive and harassing behavior on the social media platform. All in the new Twitter Beta, coming soon.
At CES today, Twitter’s director of product management, Suzanne Xie, unveiled other changes coming this year, with a focus on conversations.
From The Verge:
Xie says Twitter is adding a new setting for “conversation participants” right on the compose screen. It has four options: “Global, Group, Panel, and Statement.” Global lets anybody reply, Group is for people you follow and mention, and Panel is people you specifically mention in the tweet. Statement simply allows you to post a tweet and receive no replies. (No word on whether Statement also automatically formats your tweet as a classic iPhone Notes App apology, but it should.)
Xie says that Twitter is “in the process of doing research on the feature. The mock ups are going to be part of an experiment we’re going to run” in Q1. It will take learnings from that experiment and use them to launch the feature globally later this year.
“Getting ratio’d, getting dunked on, the dynamics that happen that we think aren’t as healthy are definitely part of… our thinking about this,” Xie says. When asked if there’s a concern that the ability to limit replies could mean misinformation couldn’t be as easily rebutted, Xie gestured to the ability to quote tweet as one possible resolution, but that it’s “something we’re going to be watching really closely as we experiment.”
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Twitter will put options to limit replies directly on the compose screen [theverge.com, reporting by Dieter Bohn]