Tag Archive for: Twitter replies

One of the biggest issues keeping many brands from promoting themselves more heavily on Twitter is the platform’s rampant trolling and abuse problems. Over the last few years, Twitter has become infamous for the rude, inappropriate, or even vulgar behavior of its users despite several attempts to address the issue.

Now, Twitter is giving users another tool to reduce the impact of trolls and other troublemakers by allowing users to hide replies to their tweets from the public.

While the feature has been rumored for months, representatives from the company have confirmed it will be rolling out the feature as a test starting in June.

As the company says in a blog post from this week:

“Starting in June, we’ll be experimenting with ways to give people more control over their conversations by giving them an option to hide replies to their Tweets.”

The tool allows you to actively moderate responses to your Tweets by individually hiding offensive or problematic responses. Users can then choose to reveal the Tweet if by selecting to show hidden replies.

Jane Manchun Wong previewed the feature, including screenshots of how it will work:

The feature doesn’t allow you to fully delete inappropriate comments like Facebook or Instagram, nor does it allow you to entirely turn off responses to your Tweets. Still, it gives brands and users more control over the toxicity in their feeds and provides healthier discussions for everyone involved.

Twitter has always been built on the idea that brevity is the soul of wit. But, it can still be hard to fit everything you need to say in just 140 characters, especially if you’re responding to someone with a long username.

Until now, user names were included in YouTube’s character limit. That is no longer the case as of this week. Twitter announced that usernames won’t subtract from your tweet’s 140 character count from now on.

Additionally, the company is changing up how replies appear to make conversations easier to follow with three new features:

  • Who you are replying to will appear above the Tweet text rather than within the Tweet text itself, so you have more characters to have conversations.
  • You can tap on “Replying to…” to easily see and control who’s part of your conversation.
  • When reading a conversation, you’ll actually see what people are saying, rather than seeing lots of @usernames at the start of a Tweet.

“It’s now easier to follow a conversation, so you can focus on what a discussion is about, and who is having it,” Twitter explained in a blog post. “Also, with all 140 characters for your replies, you have more room to participate in group conversations.

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The new changes should be available to all users across PC, iOS, and Android already. According to the company’s testing, Twitter says the new features lead to higher engagement for conversations.