Twitter is expanding its testing of the hide replies feature to users in USA and Japan.
The feature will allow the user who tweeted to hide replies on their tweets (viewers will be able to see the hidden replies). Twitter is doing this to afford users a higher level of control on their tweets.
According to data from the initial test phase, Twitter believes that users will mostly use this feature to hide replies they believe are irrelevant to the initial tweet, abusive and unintelligent.
The company found that 27% of whose tweets were hidden felt they needed to reconsider how they interact with others online. If this feature scales as testing goes on it could mean that over a quarter of users change their approach and make Twitter less noisy and abusive – a welcome change in my opinion.
Twitter is yet to disclose whether this feature will be rolled out globally and when that will be but the expansion of testing territories is definitely welcome and a positive sign for those interested in the feature coming to the platform.
One downside will be the tool being used to hide informative responses in order to promote agendas and create biases, though other users will probably call such behaviour out and thus creating self-governance around the feature
