For Nigeria’s elected officials, the new conversation features Twitter said it is planning may address the headache they face from constant heckling and criticisms of almost every post they make on the social platform.
“What we shared today are examples of what we’re planning on testing through experimentation, not necessarily representative of the exact features we’ll ship after learning and iteration,” Keyvon BeykPour, product lead at Twitter and founder of Periscope said.
Twitter said it is in line with keeping its promise to promote “healthy conversations”. But some critics say it only enables public officials to censor who they want to reply to their posts. The new features may also limit the use of Twitter as an engagement and conversational platform.
“Some of these options seem like they would allow harassment to happen on a whole new level,” said Breanna Conlon, a Twitter user. “Someone could drop your name without the handle, say things about you, lie about you, or spread misinformation without you or anyone that is close to you knowing. That seems dangerous.”
Read also Instagram introduces anti-bullying measures
Suzanne Xie, Twitter’s director of product management, who made the disclosure at the CES event in Las Vegas, said the new feature “conversation participants” will be on the compose screen and it comes with has four options: “Global, Group, Panel, Statement”.
“We’ve really intentionally tried to make the images and footage that are captured on the ground at an event look different than other images and videos that you might attach to a tweet,” said Keith Coleman, Twitter’s head of consumer products.
When a user activates the Global option after making a post, he or she is inviting comments from anybody. The Group option limits reply to only the people a user follows and mentions. The Panel option is for people a user specifically mentions in the tweet while the Statement will allow a user to post a tweet and receive no replies. For instance, President Muhammadu Buhari’s budget speech or new year speech would most likely come as a statement with no replies.
On Tuesday, Twitter offered the public a first glimpse of the new a new prototype for the Twitter app, which the company is calling “twttr” in a nod to CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, that includes a variety of changes to how Twitter looks and operates, centered on a new format for conversations and color-coded replies.
Following the announcement, some users expressed support for the move saying it changes the dynamic of Twitter if you no longer can engage with any tweet you see.
“Interesting to see Twitter go from being religious about “the public conversation” to conceding that sometimes you don’t want any rando on the internet to respond,” Dare Obasanjo, partner group program manager at Microsoft said in a tweet.
Xie said to limit misinformation through tweets you can’t reply to, the company’s exploring the option of allowing quote retweets.
