Twitter recently announced a new feature allowing users to hide replies. They’ve been testing it in Canada but have decided to start rolling it out in both the US and Japanese markets.
February was the first announcement of the new feature and testing began in July. According to a Twitter blog post, “We saw that people were more likely to reconsider their interactions when their tweet was hidden”.
Twitter already has a mute feature that allows users to effectively block a person without unfollowing them. However, this new feature goes a step further and allows you to curate what replies others reading your comments can see.
The idea behind the update is to prevent people from butting into a conversation. Although, in my opinion it will allow people to tweet out hot takes and then make it appear as if there are no opposing viewpoints. “Echo chambers” are already a prevalent issue on social media platforms and this new feature feels designed to make them worse.