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    Twitter wants to make users feel welcome, says it will let them 'hide' abusive tweet replies

    Synopsis

    Twitter said it is also exploring more options around who can reply to or see specific conversations.

    It’s been a busy week for Indian twitterati. Much pent-up anger has been tweeted about, and things that have found a mention include politics (but of course), the impending Ayodhya verdict, Maharashtra power deal, Delhi lawyers scrapping with the cops and the India-Bangladesh T20 games.But this is not all. Those frequent on Twitter would have noticed that many accounts on the micro-blogging platform have started using “Mastodon”. Many have tagged their names to the account and urged their followers to follow suit and quit Twitter to protest against the social platform’s policies..
    Microblogging site Twitter has introduced a new feature for people to hide replies to their tweets.

    The company said earlier, those replying on tweets could shift the topic or tone of a discussion and derail what they and their audience wanted to talk about. The company said it tested the option for people to hide replies to their tweets, and learned that the feature is a useful new way to manage conversations.

    Here’s how it works. Anyone can choose to hide replies to their tweets. Everyone can see and engage with hidden replies by tapping the grey icon that will appear on the Tweets. Twitter said it learnt during the tests that people mostly hide replies they think are irrelevant, off-topic, or annoying, and 85% of the people who hid replies were not using the block or mute option. In Canada, 27% of people who had their tweets hidden said they would reconsider how they interact with others in the future. Also, they thought it was a helpful way to manage what they saw, similar to muted keywords. Some people mentioned that they didn’t want to hide replies due to fear of retaliation as the icon remained visible. Twitter said it will continue to get feedback on this.

    The company said it will be launching a new hide replies endpoint so developers can build additional conversation management tools. Twitter said it is also exploring more options around who can reply to or see specific conversations, and is testing engagement changes to see if these lead to healthier discussions.

    The option to hide replies is rolling out globally on iOS, Android, Twitter Lite, and Twitter.com.


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