The goal seems to be to make conversations less volatile on the social media platform. The site described the update as part of its ongoing mission to “give people more control over their Twitter experience.” The Twitter team also explained that they have “developed different features over the years–from block, muting keywords and accounts, to notifications filters–so that everyone can tailor their experience to make Twitter work best for them,” in a blog post Thursday.
Not only does the new feature give users the ability to curate a conversation, but it also offers a potential benefit on the commenter’s side. Twitter claimed “27 percent of people who had their [comments] hidden said they would reconsider how they interact with others in the future,” meaning a handful of negative commenters were likely to reconsider their wording or tone before posting again.
So how can users utilize the new feature? Twitter users can only hide replies to tweets they originally published. This means a user cannot silence any commenter on a third party’s post.
On tweets the user posted via their Twitter profile, a new option to “hide replies” is active in the tweet’s drop-down menu. This can be found by hitting a small “V” shaped icon in the top right corner of the tweet. This is possible on either the main tweet or on the replies themselves.
Users simply hit “hide reply” to remove the comment from the tweet’s feed, or “unhide reply” to reinstate it. In order to view all hidden responses on any tweet, a new button will be added in the lower righthand corner. A comment that the comment is unavailable will replace it in the public feed.
Early reactions to the update among Twitter users were predictably mixed. Some tweeted about their new power lightheartedly, while others said they’d rather continue seeing harsh or even offensive replies.
Some changes from the test run among Canadian users have already been instated. Users will be informed if the author of a tweet hides their comments after Twitter received complaints from users whose comments disappeared without warning during the original trial. When a comment is hidden, the commenter will receive a notice that asks if they’d like to block the account that hid their tweet. If they do, the user who chose to hide hide the reply will never be able to unhide it, according to Twitter.
