Twitter’s at it again! This time, Twitter’s developing yet another audience control option for Tweets, including a new toggle that would enable you to either stop people from mentioning your @handle completely or limit mentions to only those who you follow in the app.

Don’t @Me

Posted by Reverse Engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong, the new experimental option would give users more control over how people can interact with their Tweets. At the top, there’s an ‘Allow Others to Mention you’ toggle, which would completely stop people from referencing your @handle. This would presumably deactivate any mention of your handle, similar to Twitter’s recently launched ‘Unmention’ option. So, if you choose to leave a conversation through this option, your handle link is then deactivated within that thread. People can still mention your handle after that, but it won’t link back to your profile, nor will you be alerted to such.

Presumably, if you choose to stop others from mentioning you completely through this new option, that would follow similar logic – you won’t be able to stop people from using your @handle in their Tweets, but will no longer be an active mention. To add, there’s also a new option that would enable you to limit mentions to only those you follow in the app.

Twitter has released a range of audience control options for Tweets over the past year, which, when combined, could have a significant impact on the way Twitter functions, moving away from its ‘Public Square’ approach and giving everyone a voice on topical discussion, to more niche Tweet chats. Which could be a good thing. The main reason Twitter decided to add all of this is to help users avoid the negative impacts of public posting and the fear of being judged if they say something ‘wrong’.

True enough, a Pew Research study published last year revealed that around 25% of Twitter users in the US produce some 97% of all Tweets, which is a lot of passive Twitter consumption. The public nature of the platform tends to quickly and exponentially amplify your bad takes.

By providing more control options, you reduce such concerns, while also giving people more options to shut down spammers, creeps, trolls, and anyone else looking to provoke you in the app. Again, this is a good move as Twitter users should have the option to be able to dictate their own Twitter experience and do away with all those rubbish interactions.

The Wrap

While there are certain concerns about public figures shutting down dissenting options and using tools like these to essentially put a string over their audiences, no reports document any of these tools being used negatively. Twitter hasn’t made any official announcement on the test, which isn’t public yet anyway, though one developer did confirm that it’s already under investigation.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3ezWsVx