This archive report was first published on 9 January 2020.
January 9, 2020, marked a significant development in Twitter's efforts to give users more control over their conversations. The social media platform announced a new feature that enables users to restrict replies from their followers or stop replies completely.
This feature, built on the hide replies option launched earlier, allows users to effectively have a discussion that others can see but not participate in. According to Twitter, this feature will give people the opportunity to interject abuse and unwanted comments into conversations.
Twitter user Karissa Bell noted that the upcoming feature will let users control who can reply to their tweets. As users compose their tweets, they will be able to limit replies to followers, prevent people mentioned in the tweet from replying, or set the conversation to have no replies at all.
Twitter's director of product management, Suzanne Xie, explained that the company wants to give users more control over their conversations. Xie stated, "We thought, well, what if we could actually put more control into the author's hands? What if we give them really a way to control the conversation space as they're actually composing a tweet?"
Twitter has been focusing on building trust and privacy into its product features, considering the importance of privacy and data protection in the industry. The company aims to refine the new feature during the first quarter and prepare it for a global rollout later this year.
