Twitter Now Testing Setting for Limiting Who Can Reply to Tweets

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To make a long story short: The people who complain about this and will quit using twitter because of it, are exactly the people that most people on twitter would like to not see on the platform. So yes, please do stop using it.

 

[cocky jeremy]

If I can't reply to someone's tweet what's the point of using twitter?

Exactly why they'll scrap this. The less interaction on the service, the less it gets used.

 

[Tozovac]

If I can't reply to someone's tweet what's the point of using twitter?

It's another example of change for the sake of change.

 

[roland.g]

Their solution to the cacophony of crickets is to all the crickets to selectively mute other crickets only for the purpose of replying to that instance. And this will diminish the level of noise??
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This feature was created solely so butthurt celebrities and other people in power don’t have to see criticism, which is the single only good thing about Twitter.

Couldn’t you just retweet it with the @ and # and reference the OT and the subject and still get threads going about it.

 

[TJ82]

Well it's either a circle jerk or abusive bandwagon, neither extreme is great, though the way things are at present I'd say this is long overdue and for the best. Just way too much abuse in the UK online, it needs seriously cracked down on.

I'm sure the US is just as bad. Social media can't just end up a place where a bunch of useless rabid dudes throw crap at each other endlessly. It's turned into some odd political battleground. Who says social media has to be about that.

 

[blairh]

So why even use Twitter then?

Let’s just cut to the chase and say what this change is really about: allowing people to post about controversial topics (i.e. politics), and not have their feelings hurt that other people have different views than they do. It’ll prevent them from being challenged. It’ll also prevent them getting ratio’d. So if you thought the echo chamber was bad already, just wait. This is going to encourage all kinds of toxic s—t posting, increase tribalism, and spread fake news faster because dishonest people will know they can get away with it because they won’t be called out for it directly.

To a lesser extent, it’s also about curtailing bots and toxic behavior/replies, which is commendable.

What do you mean why use Twitter then? Nothing that I find appealing about Twitter has to do with the replies to a post.

This already exits on Youtube and Instagram. You can disable comments.

This will do nothing towards spreading fake news faster or not.

 

[Septembersrain]

Twitter trying to be the new Facebook? I mean really?

 

[topdrawer]

i would prefer a filter for keywords in user profiles. it's very easy to eliminate most trolls by filtering out a couple of words.

 

[826317]

I can see this could reduce traffic on Twitter's network and maybe there are some other benefits, but I can also see some truly deranged lunatics spreading what some might consider lies or disinformation to then have the author limit rebuttals (replies).

To me one of the foundations of Twitter is you put your comment out there and hope it can stand up to scrutiny. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I hope it does not hurt more than it might help.

Exactly, twitter was never like facebook. Everything is public which means the public should be allowed to respond as well. If not, then don't even show us the original tweet to begin with.

This is a clear attempt to allow snowflaky somewhat-high-profile twitter users to make a post that thousands will see, but nobody will be able to publicly debate directly with them.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Oh great. So now the people with uninformed opinions can go about their business without being corrected. The circle jerk will continue and disinformation will propagate.

 

[and 1989 others]

Every iteration of reducing contact, things you find challenging, people the algorithm think you dont want to see makes the platform redundant.

If its intended purpose was to open up communication, information sharing and discussion, this is not the way to do that.

Dorsey is an oddball.

 

[1146331]

Oh good, now self-righteous people can live more in an bubble where only those who agree with them echo their thoughts.

That's real great for freedom of information and bettering one's views.

 

[Tozovac]

Twitter trying to be the new Facebook? I mean really?

Instagram is already trying, annoyingly, so why not Twitter now.

You know how all cars look alike now but before in the good old days they were all awesomely unique?

Today is the tail end of the good all days for Facebook and Instagram and Twitter so enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[0924487]

This is why I do not post original content on other people's platforms - you lose control and you subject yourself to unwanted moderation and censorship, for example, YouTube.

I create and post everything on my personal website, host my own comments, and just post the link of the full article or video etc, to Twitter etc, and have a block of text as a picture attached to an empty tweet.

 

[Naaaaak]

Take screenshot of loser comment. Tweet and tag them. GG.

 

[roland.g]

This is why I do not post original content on other people's platforms - you lose control and you subject yourself to unwanted moderation and censorship, for example, YouTube.

I create and post everything on my personal website, host my own comments, and just post the link of the full article or video etc, to Twitter etc, and have a block of text as a picture attached to an empty tweet.

Great solution. Except it’s not realistic for most people.

 

[0924487]

Great solution. Except it’s not realistic for most people.

If you want to try it out and don't want the coding part, you can take a baby step by starting your own Wordpress page. It's free if you just let Wordpress host it for you. Once you know what you are doing, you can move it off and control your own hosting options.

 

[SgtPepper12]

I think twitter was mainly successful because it was simple, everybody picked it up very quickly and you always understood what you were doing, at least sort of. All these new "features" now slowly compromise that concept so that you really often have no idea what the hell is going on. One of the worst new things as an example is that people can limit who can see their posts. So very often, you see threads with invisible messages, consequently, you have no clue what the hell people are even talking about. This turns twitter into a Swiss cheese with people seeing different things and people using twitter as different things, which makes no sense to me.

A lot of the issue in my opinion has to do with a lot of people using twitter who clearly should never have used it. If you have a nervous breakdown over somebody writing a mean thing on twitter, maybe you just should never have used it to begin with. But people somehow insisted that they need this in their lives, even though they clearly had an unhealthy way of dealing with random messages by random people. I understand that twitter wants as many people as possible to use their services, but at some point you make it suck for everyone to achieve that, and that's when you gotta understand that you can't have everything at the same time.

 

[fairuz]

If I can't reply to someone's tweet what's the point of using twitter?

What's the point of replying to famous people if you're not famous? That comment section is a mess, might as well hand-write a letter and throw it down the gutter.

I do like the @ feature. Was able to call to Brian Krebs about the census.gov website giving misleading guidance about web security, and he read it and responded in a DM, pretty cool.

 

[Tech198]

Being in a test phase, giving community the chance to control it woks best

 

[vikingjunior]

Anyone who turns this on will end up being blocked. If I can’t respond to a Tweet well then I don’t want to see the tweet.

 

[RickInHouston]

Why not call it censorship?

 

[truthertech]

Amen. This will be the best, and long overdue, thing to ever happen to Twitter. If I choose to follow or read someone, why should any moron be allowed to try and pollute the comments with their hate, insults, etc. Makes much more sense that someone who makes a tweet gets to decide who can comment on it. If you don't like it, then don't follow them or read what they post.

 

[jjs_nv]

Are they renaming the company, "Echo Chamber?"

 

[PaPer898989]

Honestly, I see this as a downgrade. I am a pretty avid Twitter user (although with Tweetbot), and have been for many years now, and this is definitely the result of people getting mad that their stupidity is exposed and they get dunked on hard.

The reason why I liked the idea of Twitter in the first place was because it was a platform that acted like a public square. You’d find people you disagree with, and those that you agreed with. You’d find people making compelling points and people making not-so-bright points.

At a certain point, though, Twitter decided to go against its original purpose.

- Shadow banning users that disagree with the Twitter overlords;
- Straight up banning users for no particular reason other than they were brash or held “incorrect” political viewpoints;
- Changing the way the timeline worked;
- Artificially suppressing likes and retweets;
- Artificially lower the exposure of certain trending topics;
- Artificially unfollow subscribers from “problematic” accounts to artificially keep low the number of followers;

All of this under the pretense of moderating. No moderation though on the pedophilia.

I would have loved for Twitter to stay true to its nature: staying as a platform and never act as an editor. Let people be people.

In my opinion, the block button is something that was also negative and this preceded the reply-limitation that got introduced just in the past few days. I would be totally cool with removing the block feature and leave mute instead.

Somebody annoys you and you don’t want to see notifications about them? Mute them. Very simple.

Ultimately Twitter has to make a choice: do they want to be a platform or an editor? Because right now they are behaving as an editor while disguised as a platform, therefore getting the benefits of both worlds with no responsibilities.