Users being able to hide other’s replies to their Tweets is now a thing. Twitter announced the new feature recently that will allow users to hide unwanted replies with the push of a button.
Twitter developed this feature with the idea in mind of giving users more control over the feedback to their tweets and conversations. Mainly, they wanted to offer users a way to hide or deter comments that were irrelevant to the original Tweet’s intent or comments that were abusive in nature.
“People mostly hide replies that they think are irrelevant, abusive or unintelligible. Those who used the tool thought it was a helpful way to control what they saw, similar to when keywords are muted.”
For now only users in the United States and Japan will have access to this feature which was tested as far back as March of this year.
Some Twitter users were against this feature being rolled out as they considered it a form of censorship. Twitter management did decide to roll the update out after much deliberation and expect the positives to be worth it in the long run for several compelling reasons:
- Control Over Conversations – the ability to hide irrelevant, spammy or abusive comments is a plus.
- This feature did make users think before they decided to comment on and reply to other tweets.
- More than a quarter of all users interviewed about this feature did resound that it would affect how they interacted on the platform moving forward.
All of the above is exactly why Twitter did decide to move forward with the roll out.
One major point regarding this feature is that “hidden” replies are not deleted or removed completely. Other users are able to view the hidden replies simply by clicking a button. I suppose this was Twitter’s consolation prize to those claiming censorship.
As more becomes known about this feature, we will continue to update this article.