Twitter is lastly serving to individuals shut out “reply guys”

Twitter is rolling out a brand new function that lets individuals restrict who replies to their posts | Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Pictures

Now you can restrict who’s allowed to reply to your tweets, which Twitter says helps scale back harassment.

If you happen to’re on Twitter — and particularly for those who’re a lady on Twitter — you’re in all probability nicely conscious of the “reply man” phenomenon.

It goes one thing like this: You submit one thing on Twitter — a joke, a reality, a private story — and also you get a bunch of unhelpful, distracting, and generally hateful replies alongside the considerate responses to your unique tweet.

Twitter is rolling out a brand new function right now that it has been testing since Could to assist individuals shut out reply guys and different undesirable interactions on the platform. Now, whenever you tweet, you possibly can restrict who can reply to both the individuals you comply with or the individuals you point out (by tagging their deal with with the @ tag) within the tweet. Individuals who can’t reply can nonetheless view, share, and “like” the tweets you restrict replies on.

Right here’s what it seems like:

As for individuals who really feel overlooked of the dialog — reply man or in any other case — they will nonetheless quote and retweet these limited-reply tweets.

Limiting replies is a vital function as a result of it’s designed to assist some individuals who could in any other case really feel bombarded with harassment on Twitter be extra snug posting on the platform. In keeping with Twitter’s inside analysis, individuals who submitted abuse reviews are 3 times extra probably to make use of these settings.

The reply-limiting function can also be helpful for people who find themselves making an attempt to have a targeted dialog in a small group, like a digital panel dialogue or a 1:1 interview. Take, for instance, the interview that Recode co-founder Kara Swisher had with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey through Twitter again in February. The Q&A between Dorsey and Swisher was practically unimaginable to comply with as a result of they had been each bombarded with distracting replies that cluttered the dialogue. (Dorsey joked concerning the occasion when Twitter first introduced the reply-limiting function in Could.)

Since Twitter has been testing this function, the corporate says it’s seen some strong progress, as detailed in a weblog submit by Twitter director of product administration Suzanne Xie. Xie wrote that individuals who examined the function are seeing constructive outcomes: They stated they really feel extra protected against spam and abuse and are extra snug sharing their ideas freely in consequence.

“These settings assist some individuals really feel safer and will result in extra significant conversations, whereas nonetheless permitting individuals to see totally different factors of view,” wrote Xie.

And, mercifully, Twitter says that “reply guys” aren’t blasting individuals’s DMs as an alternative — for now. It’s too quickly to inform how this function will probably be acquired now that it’s being rolled out on a wider scale. However the hope is it’ll make the platform rather less terrible for some individuals.

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