By Eric King-
Twitter is to launch a “Hide Replies” feature in June aimed at combating abuse and harassment on its platform.
The announcement comes after twitter boss, Jack Dorsey admitted that Twitter has created a “pretty terrible situation” for women, particularly women of color before revealing the company’s reliance on machine learning to identify abusive tweets as opposed to having people individually report them.
“Right now the system makes it super easy to harass and abuse others,” Dorsey said. Dorsey expressed regret about the undue weight given to likes and number of followers, because of the lack of value attached to valuable discussions.
The new functionality is expected to begin as an experiment with user feedback shaping future developments. It enables the user to hide certain responses to their original tweet, preventing readers of the original poster from reading unwanted responses. Dorsey’s new idea has obvious weaknesses. Although users can hide abusive tweets, his solution will allow readers to view read hidden tweets option, making it inferior to facebook and Instagram which have allow users to completely delete unwanted messages
Dorsey also admitted that the current form and structure of twitter encourages the postage of outrage, instead of the preferred option of inviting people to unite around topics and communities. However, a post on twitter today was celebrating a healthier social platform in which the social media platform acts more proactively to address abuse . They say 38% of abuse on their platform is surfaced for review before it is reported, with three times more abusive accounts suspended within 24 hours after a report compared to the same time last year.
A blog post by the social media giant on Tuesday read:
“People who don’t feel safe on Twitter shouldn’t be burdened to report abuse to us,” Twitter wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “Previously, we only reviewed potentially abusive Tweets if they were reported to us. We know that’s not acceptable, so earlier this year we made it a priority to take a proactive approach to abuse in addition to relying on people’s reports
“It may be best if it becomes an interest-based network,” he told TED curators Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers. Rather than focus on following individual accounts, users could be encouraged to follow hashtags, trends and communities.
Doing so would require a systematic change that represented a “huge shift” for Twitter, Dorsey said.
While Instagram and Facebook give posters the ability to delete comments entirely, Twitter’s feature will simply hide them and make them more difficult to access. Users will be able to see hidden replies by choosing the “View Hidden Tweets” option.
Twitter hopes that the “Hide Replies” feature will encourage users to be more thoughtful about what they write, with the thinking being there’s no point in being hateful if the reply can just be hidden by the original poster. Some, however, are likely to view this as Twitter’s way of allowing users to silence opposing opinions or corrections to false information.
In a blog post, Twitter explained that the “Hide Replies” feature is one of several steps it is taking to promote a “healthier Twitter.” Twitter said:
”We’ll continue to improve our technology to help us review content that breaks our rules faster and before it’s reported, specifically those who Tweet private information, threats, and other types of abuse.
We’ll make it easier for people who use Twitter to share specifics when reporting so we can take action faster, especially when it comes to protecting people’s physical safety.
Context on Tweets and our enforcement is important in understanding our rules, so we’ll add more notices within Twitter for clarity, such as if a Tweet breaks our rules but remains on the service because the content is in the public interest.We are updating our rules in the next few weeks so they’re shorter, simpler and easier to understand.
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.
You can read an outline of all of Twitter’s initiatives here.
In February, Twitter confirmed its plans to launch a feature that would allow users to hide replies that they felt didn’t contribute to a conversation. Today, alongside news of other changes to the reporting process and its documentation, Twitter announced the “Hide Replies” feature is set to launch in June.
Twitter says the feature will be an “experiment” — which means it could be changed or even scrapped, based on user feedback.
The feature is likely to spark some controversy, as it puts the original poster in control of which tweets appear in a conversation thread. This, potentially, could silence dissenting opinions or even fact-checked clarifications. But, on the flip side, it also means that people who enter conversations with plans to troll or make hateful remarks are more likely to see their posts tucked away out of view.
This, Twitter believes, could help encourage people to present their thoughts and opinions in a more polite and less abusive fashion, and shifts the balance of power back to the poster without an overcorrection. (For what it’s worth, Facebook and Instagram give users far more control over their posts, as you can delete trolls’ comments entirely