Twitter tests feature that lets you control who can reply to your tweets

MANILA, Philippines – Twitter is testing out a new feature that lets you choose who can reply to your tweets. 

Suzanne Xie, Twitter’s director of product management, spoke at CES about a new setting for “conversation participants.”

According to a report from The Verge on Thursday, January 8 (January 9 Manila time), the feature will let a user select who are able to reply: 

Global – anybody can reply
Group – limited to people you follow and mention in the tweet
Panel – only people you mention in the tweet
Statement – no one can reply 

Currently, the feature is in testing and will only be available to a few users, but may see a wider release later this year, according to Xie. 

The feature’s goal is to curb trolls hijacking tweet threads. But concerns remain whether limiting is truly more beneficial than the alternative, given that it could backfire and allow pages used for misinformation to keep their threads from being debunked. 

Other changes that Twitter is planning are a new conversation view to make it easier to follow a conversation, an ability to follow topics instead of users – Rappler.com