Twitter has come under fire in the past over how they seemingly don’t do enough to protect users from abusive users. There have been more than one instance of people, including high profile celebrities, being chased off the platform by trolls who leave behind abusive comments towards them.However the good news is that it looks like Twitter is finally doing something about it. According to researcher Jane Manchun Wong (via TechCrunch), she has discovered that Twitter is testing out a new feature in the form of “hide tweets”. What this does is that it will hide tweets in conversations that users do not want to see.
Twitter Senior PM Michelle Yasmeen Haq has since confirmed that this is indeed a feature that is in the works and explained how it works. “We already see people trying keep their conversations healthy by using block, mute, and report, but these tools don’t always address the issue. Block and mute only change the experience of the blocker, and report only works for the content that violates our policies.”
She adds, “With this feature, the person who started a conversation could choose to hide replies to their tweets. The hidden replies would be viewable by others through a menu option. We think the transparency of the hidden replies would allow the community to notice and call out situations where people use the feature to hide content they disagree with. We think this can balance the product experience between the original Tweeter and the audience.”
Whether or not this will be enough remains to be seen, but the feature is expected to roll out in a bigger way in the coming months.
Twitter is testing replies moderation. It lets you to hide replies under your tweets, while providing an option to show the hidden replies pic.twitter.com/dE19w4TLtp
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 28, 2019
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