App researcher Jane Manchun Wong is known for discovering hidden features and use reverse engineering methods to unearth upcoming features in different apps. Recently, she posted a tweet in which she shared that Twitter is working on new functionality to encourage people to not engage with negative or offensive comments to their Tweets. Instead, they can choose to hide those replies.
Now, one thing to clarify here is that the feature of hiding replies is not new. The latest update is this that if a conversation starts getting too heated up or offensive, Twitter will give prompt notification to the author of the Tweet to hide some replies, instead of engaging with them.
Wong shared a screenshot of the notification along with her Tweet. This notification says that to help people have more meaningful and less offensive conversations, Tweeters can hide replies from conversations that they start. These hidden replies are moved to another page where they can be viewed by selecting that Hidden Reply icon on the Tweet, but it will not be visible for other followers or participants of that conversation.
There are two cases in which hiding a reply or Tweet is possible already. Firstly, if you report to Twitter about an offensive Tweet, Twitter will hide it with a notification and will give you the choice to view the content again if you want to.
Secondly, if you have muted or blocked an account and their Tweets are shared by somebody else amongst mutual followers, Twitter will still hide that Tweet and give you the option to either ignore it view it.
So, content hiding options were already available on Twitter, but the new functionality about hiding replies and Twitter’s notification about it is quite remarkable and very encouraging.
Many users have commented under Jane Wong’s Tweet and have appreciated Twitter’s latest effort to curb the spread of negative and offensive behavior on its platform.
Read next: Twitter’s new ‘Birdwatch’ feature is aimed to combat misinformation and to provide more context for tweets in the form of ‘Notes’
Now, one thing to clarify here is that the feature of hiding replies is not new. The latest update is this that if a conversation starts getting too heated up or offensive, Twitter will give prompt notification to the author of the Tweet to hide some replies, instead of engaging with them.
Wong shared a screenshot of the notification along with her Tweet. This notification says that to help people have more meaningful and less offensive conversations, Tweeters can hide replies from conversations that they start. These hidden replies are moved to another page where they can be viewed by selecting that Hidden Reply icon on the Tweet, but it will not be visible for other followers or participants of that conversation.
There are two cases in which hiding a reply or Tweet is possible already. Firstly, if you report to Twitter about an offensive Tweet, Twitter will hide it with a notification and will give you the choice to view the content again if you want to.
Secondly, if you have muted or blocked an account and their Tweets are shared by somebody else amongst mutual followers, Twitter will still hide that Tweet and give you the option to either ignore it view it.
So, content hiding options were already available on Twitter, but the new functionality about hiding replies and Twitter’s notification about it is quite remarkable and very encouraging.
Many users have commented under Jane Wong’s Tweet and have appreciated Twitter’s latest effort to curb the spread of negative and offensive behavior on its platform.
