Twitter's upcoming feature will keep the trolls from hounding you

• Twitter is testing a new feature that will allow users to restrict who can reply to their tweets.
  
• Four settings offered range from ‘global’, where anyone can reply, to ‘statement’, where no-one but the user can post a reply.
  
• This is the latest change by the social-networking platform to aid in ‘conversational health’.
  

Trolls are a persistent problem on Twitter. Whether its politics, sports or just general conversation — they have a way of irking the inner pacifist in everyone.

However, Twitter is testing a new feature to take power away from the trolls. Users will be able to select who can reply to their posts, the company announced at CES 2020.

"The primary motivation is control. We want to build on the theme of authors getting more control and we’ve thought… that there are many analogues of how people have communications in life," said Kayvon Beykpour, vice president of product at Twitter.

Here are the four ways Twitter is proposing to limit replies:

1. Global - anyone can reply to your messages
   
2. Group - only the people you follow can reply to your messages
   
3. Panel - only the people mentioned in the tweet can post a reply
   
4. Statement - no one else can reply except for you
   

This is the second change that Twitter is bringing in after it rolled out the option for users to limit which replies show up on a thread last year.

Conversational health is debatable

The new features might restrict trolls for replying directly to a tweet but if one is dedicated enough — they can just message you directly. Nonetheless, Twitter calls this a step towards ‘conversational health’.

Just last week, Elliot Alderson declared he would expose these ‘IT cell losers’ after Bollywood actress, Sonam Kapoor, complained of bots cluttering her timeline.


Every day, new targets are abused and harassed online as their posts are spammed with unwanted replies.

While restricting replies will be an obstacle for trolls to overcome, critics argue that it will also keep people from calling out ‘fake news’. The end result could be more misinformation being spread online.

The feature is currently being tested with a small group of users. Twitter hopes that they will be able to start rolling out the new feature over the next couple of months. Depending on feedback and usage, they will then decide whether to make it available worldwide.

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