A new Twitter feature which allows users to hide replies to their tweets is set to launch this June.
Twitter was spotted working on this feature back in February. A representative from Twitter later confirmed it would soon be rolling out publically.
A blog post published by the company this week reveals that the ‘hide tweets’ feature will be available in June:
“Starting in June, we’ll be experimenting with ways to give people more control over their conversations by giving them an option to hide replies to their Tweets.”
As the announcement states, the option to hide tweets will be an experiment at first. So it may be tweaked or scrapped altogether based on how users react to it.
The current plan is to allow users to hide replies to their own tweets in order to keep conversations “healthy.”
When a user hides a tweet it will be hidden for all other Twitter users, which is different from the block and mute functions that only change the experience of the blocker.
However, it will be clearly indicated when a tweet is hidden and other users will even have the option to reveal the tweet manually.
The announcement of this feature did not come without controversy, with some users arguing its a form of censorship and other users saying it can help keep trolls at bay.
It should be noted that hiding tweets is a less extreme measure than outright deleting them, which is the solution offered by other networks like Facebook and Instagram.
Twitter is under pressure right now to fix its rampant abuse problem. Time will tell if hiding tweets ends up changing anything for the better.
