Twitter has announced that it has begun testing a new setting that lets users limit who can reply to tweets.
One of the problems on Twitter is that anyone – including those you don’t follow or who don’t follow you – can reply or write their opinion on your tweet. This can lead to harassment and unwanted tweets. With this, Twitter is testing a new feature that’ll let users control who can reply to their tweets.
You’ll be given three options of who can respond to your tweets: everyone, only people you follow and only people you mention. If you choose any of the latter, the reply function will be greyed out for people in that category. They can view, like and retweet your post, but they won’t be able to reply directly to the tweet.
The social network said that besides preventing replies by trollers, the new feature can be used to allow the original tweeter to conduct fireside chats, interviews and other kinds of invitation-only conversations with small groups or individual people.
There have been mixed reactions on the new feature. Some say it’s a way to stop potential harassers from replying. Others are worried that it could increase the spread of misinformation as these users could deliberately tweet something untrue while using the feature to stop replies from others.
