To not get in the way of “meaningful conversations”, Twitter on Tuesday rolled out limiting replies to all users. This was earlier only accessible to some users as Twitter was testing it. With the new settings, all users can now choose who can reply — everyone, only people you follow, or only people you mention. These options will now be available before you tweet. This can be accessed by clicking on the gray globe at the bottom of the tweet.
People who can’t reply will still be able to view, retweet, retweet with comment, share, and like these tweets. The feature is available on iOS, Android and Twitter.com. It’s not available on Tweetdeck as yet.
“Sometimes people are more comfortable talking about what's happening when they can choose who can reply. We’ve seen people use these settings to have conversations that weren't really possible before,” Twitter’s Director of Product Management Susanne Xie said.
Twitter began testing the feature in May. Xie wrote that people who face abuse are three times more likely to use this feature, and those who do face abuse have found this feature to be useful. It’s also a method to block out noise, she said, as 60% of the people who limited replies did not use the mute or block functions.
“Problematic repliers aren't finding another way – these settings prevented an average of three potentially abusive replies while only adding one potentially abusive Retweet with Comment. And, we didn’t see any uptick in unwanted Direct Messages,” Xie wrote.
Twitter has been toying with a way to unveil this since January. In her post, Xie wrote that people were using these settings to “ have more sensitive conversations about politics and social issues.”
However, it is only replies that is blocked, people can retweet these tweets with their comments.
“Differing views can still be shared with Retweets with Comments, which sometimes reach a larger audience than the original tweet. Several times, we saw more Likes and views on a Retweet with Comment than on the original Tweet, even though the original Tweet author had more followers,” Xie wrote.
“Twitter serves the public conversation, so it’s important for people to be able to see different perspectives,” she added.
She said that the social media company would work on making it easier to find the discussion on retweets with comments, and a new label to show when these limited reply settings are in place. The company would also look at an option that would allow adding people to reply settings once the conversation has begun, and even a notification when you are invited to join.