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Twitter Social Networks Technology

Twitter Will Soon Let You Choose Who Can Reply To Your Tweets (venturebeat.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
At a press briefing today, executives from Twitter outlined policy changes that'll affect the social network's over 330 million users in the months to come. Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour focused on three core tenets in his presentation: Health, conversations, and interest. From a report: "Public conversation is only valuable if it's healthy enough that people would want to participate in the first place," he said. "[We need to] ensure the integrity of the information that people are consuming on the platform is high." On the conversations side of the equation, Twitter plans to take different parts of conversations and stick them in a sleeker, slicker global view. It'll pull out pieces like users' names, their verified statuses, and more within tweet details in a Reddit-style tree layout, making it easier to follow threads. Perhaps more significantly, Twitter intends to roll out controls over conversation dynamics, which in the coming year will allow users to choose who's able to reply to a given tweet: (1) Anyone on Twitter, (2) a group of people you follow and mention, (3) people you know, or (3) no one. Twitter calls this last option a "statement," and they'll be denoted by an icon in the lower right corner indicating that the tweet can't be replied to.
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Twitter Will Soon Let You Choose Who Can Reply To Your Tweets More

Twitter Will Soon Let You Choose Who Can Reply To Your Tweets

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  • Not good (Score:3)

    by Quakeulf ( 2650167 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @02:26PM (#59600066)
    They need to deal with blocklisting. A lot of people, myself included, are blocklisted by the majority of the users on there for things we can't figure out why. Usually it seems to be caused by scrubbing following/followers-lists on targeted accounts, but it harms more than it helps.

    • Yeah, what they need to do is make blocklisting (or mutelisting) an official feature.

      I have no idea why it happened to you, but blocklisting is a good way for people who are being harassed to block groups of known bad actors. It's a personal choice, and you don't have the right to not be blocked. Maybe sometimes it catches up people that don't deserve to be there, and the net is cast a bit wide, but by and large, it's for people looking to protect themselves.

      I'm not as big a fan of this new thing—it b

      • I don't really know much about Twitter, but don't you have to be following someone for them to show up as a voice in your feed?

        Which means that you are already in the echo chamber... no?

        • Yes and no.

          You can add people to lists without following them, which is generally how I do things.

          But the enforced echo chamber is going to be created by people—of any political stripe—that decide that they're only going to follow back a certain subset of their followers, and only those mutual follows will be able to comment on anything.

          So some pundit might tweet out something that's verifiably false, and the only responses you'll see will be from people that are cheering on the falsehood, and n

    • i bet ppl will still say "dont @ me" lol

  • Oh Goody, Twitter's turning into Reddit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @02:27PM (#59600068)
    a big giant circle jerk where opposing views are invisible. Also looking forward to the lawsuits when politicians who use Twitter in a defacto official capacity block people from responding. I'm guessing that's exactly the purpose of this policy.

  • As if we didn't live in enough of an echo chamber (Score:3)

    by butchersong ( 1222796 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @02:28PM (#59600072)
    There is something about this that I find a little depressing. I don't use Twitter anymore but this only devalues the platform further.
    • Half of nothing is still nothing.

      I don't have any objective way of measuring it, but I wouldn't be surprised if that such criteria were to exist, Twitter could be considered to have an overall negative value to society. That isn't to say that every interaction is bad, but that in aggregate it causes more problems than it solves. Assuming that to be true, anything Twitter does to make itself less relevant would actually be a societal positive.

  • Ruination of the site (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PedanticSpellingTrol ( 746300 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @02:29PM (#59600078)
    Much like how Tumblr was for Porn, Twitter's only real use case is dunking on blue checkmarks. RIP.

    • Re:Ruination of the site (Score:5, Informative)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @02:51PM (#59600148)
      About the only thing you can do in 140 characters is convey simplistic world views or use short quips and zingers to troll and shit post. The design of the platform makes meaningful conversation impossible even without tools that let a person ensconce themselves within a bubble.
      • I don't know if more characters would help. Facebook allows longer responses and I think the lack of meaningful conversation is still there. I don't know if people *want* meaningful conversation on these platforms. It seems like mainly people want the instant gratification of quick likes/retweets. Anyway, that's my hot take. :)

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          I don't know if more characters would help. Facebook allows longer responses and I think the lack of meaningful conversation is still there. I don't know if people *want* meaningful conversation on these platforms. It seems like mainly people want the instant gratification of quick likes/retweets. Anyway, that's my hot take. :)

          And that is the real problem - these platforms reward quickness - you can make a thoughtful reply, but these platforms discourage that. Instead they reward those quick fingers who str

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

      Twitter's only real use case is dunking on blue checkmarks. RIP.

      Wow... you just dehumanized an entire group of people while stating the "only real use case" is to harass them. It's little wonder why people would want to block people like you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sexconker ( 1179573 )

        Who said anything about harassment?

        Pointing out that morons are morons is not harassment. Stupid people (like yourself) need to be told that they are stupid. The public needs to be told as well.
        It is inherently good to shut down idiots on crusades because their crusades are destructive to everyone in their path.

  • Is this something that Donald Trump asked for? (Hey, Zuck---do me a solid here.)

    Just what we needed. Another feature to add to the echo chamber of social media.

    • (Hey, Zuck---do me a solid here.)

      What does Zuck have to do with Twitter?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Is this something that Donald Trump asked for?...

      Probably not directly but if you follow his twitter feed you can easily see why this feature is being implemented...

  • Controlling the Narrative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @02:33PM (#59600094)
    How are blue checkmarks supposed to spread fake news if someone can call them out? This is exactly why news orgs eliminated comments on their articles, after all.

    • Yup. And it's the same reason Google and Mozilla and Apple all blocked Dissenter.

      People do not trust the mainstream media and "big tech" because they haven proven to be malicious 99% of the time.

      • Only problem is that the mainstream media still have a better hit-and-miss ratio than the average wannabe reporter who doesn't even bother to fact-check since there is literally no way to hold them liable for the damage they do.

  • The only way social media works is giving people the power to screen out malignant assholes. this is going to be a big improvement, though there will be some entitled jerks who are unhappy they can't intrude on everyone.

  • I thought Trump was already told as a Federal public figure he wasn't allowed to block tweets from people he doesn't like. Does that still stand?

    • Probably not. iirc it was because he was blocking them from seeing his communications. I don't think they have grounds if he only blocks them from replying to his communications.
      • It blocked the account, and companies have constantly screamed the mantra and beat the drum of "YoU dOnT oWn YoUr AcCoUnT" for years, so which is it? Do people own their accounts or not? That and it's a trivial matter to log out.

    • It doesn't apply in this case as people can still make their opinions known. If someone wants to make a negative remark then they will just have to do it in a new tweet instead of having their tweet mixed in with all of the supportive comments which will be made by followers. I can see Trump marking tweets to only allow replies by followers and then unfollow anyone whom says anything bad. That way in a short amount of time all of his tweets will only contain positive replies with a lot of other negative twe

  • Does that mean Twitter can be blocked from responding?

  • ... nothing but an echo chamber. Post something controversial and disallow your critics from responding to it? This feature will be the equivalent of allowing one to erect a "Non-sycophants Keep Out!" sign. Look for most tweet replies to turn into nothing but "Great idea, Sir!". When disagreeable responders are allowed to reply, the entire platform will be an even bigger joke than it's already become.

    • Why limit it to controversial bullshit? How about blatant and unambiguous bullshit?

      "The world is made of cheese!"

      Disallow anyone from replying that offers any contradicting statements and rely on some loonies agreeing with you, for they WILL come. Be them trolls, be them actual idiots or bullshit peddlers making money with the bullshit you're posting (probably just like yourself) and you will find some poor idiot buying into it.

  • So Twitter will become even more of an echo chamber.

  • Adding reverb to the echo chamber? (Score:3)

    by Tehrasha ( 624164 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @03:02PM (#59600184) Homepage
    I wonder if the filters will work both ways, so the user can block 'statements'...

  • What about the reverse? (Score:3)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @03:06PM (#59600204)
    If I can't reply to it, then I don't want to see it. If the person making the "statement" can't handle feedback, then their "statement" is probably of no value to begin with. Are there controls to allow me to mute "statements?"

    • The problem is rather that this basically allows anyone to spout any kind of bullshit without contest. You can state any harebrained nonsense and will receive nothing but praise and agreement from people buying into your brand of bullshit, with every sane person silenced.

      So some poor idiot reading your bullshit will think that you're right. Hey, everyone agrees with that person, he must be onto something!

  • Hello....
    hello...
    Welcome to the echo chamber.
  • Now Twitter gets to be even more an echo chamber than before.

  • The list of options thus far (Score:3)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @03:58PM (#59600412)

    The list of options that I've heard so far is this. 1) Everyone, 2) Those who you follow and those who you @, 3) Only the people who you @, 4) Just you. So it doesn't seem that the ability to only have those who follow you or some custom list exists. The ideal, for what I gather is that it's aiming to stop bullying on the site. So if someone is being a shithead to you, you just unfollow them and poof they can't comment. That said, how it will actually work out in the end is am sure, a giant dumpster of fire.

  • Twitter doesnâ(TM)t apply rules to everyone. Some can spread hatred , lies and threats without fear of retribution. Some quote facts, and they are blocked. Fuck twitter and fuck Jack Dorsey.
    • I had to report an account for posting CP three times before something was done about it, the third time was CCd to the FBI tip line.

  • Because Twitter wasn't already enough of an echo chamber.

    Way to give people believing in bullshit a way to stay out of reality better.

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