Twitter Canada is experimenting with the option for users to be able to hide replies to their tweets.
The company said that the test is available to Canadians only and will begin rolling out next week. This new feature won’t be available to Twitter users globally, meaning they will still be able to see replies to tweets. They will also be able to see Canadian tweet replies that have been hidden, according to Twitter.
Twitter says it wants to experiment with this feature to give users to have more control over their conversations. The company said that it wants to give more control to users without compromising the transparency and openness that is key to the Twitter experience.
“Canada was chosen for this experiment based on its maturity as a market and the depth, and range, of conversations we see from within the market,” Michelle Haq, senior product manager of health at Twitter, said to MobileSyrup.
“Our Canadian team works in a very integrated fashion with its global colleagues and with this experiment, we’ll be watching closely to see reactions amongst Canadians on the service and the feature’s impact on the conversations we’re seeing.”
How will this new feature actually work?
Authors of tweets will be able to hide any reply they feel is distracting, irrelevant or offensive. However, the replies are not deleted and instead will just be hidden from individual threads.
You can tap the tiny arrow button next to a reply and select ‘Hide Reply.’ The hidden replies are then be added to the notebook folder, a new icon that is set to be part of each thread.
As mentioned previously, anyone in the world can see these hidden replies by clicking on the notebook icon. The user can also go into the notebook and unhide replies. Unhiding replies works in the same way as well. Users will need to click on the tiny arrow and select ‘Unhide Reply.’
These hidden tweets can still be liked, retweeted and replied to by anyone.
Twitter has also recently been testing out a new desktop user interface with some users.
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