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Twitter has left the chat. Well, not exactly, but it’s testing out a feature to allow you to leave the chat.
Do you ever find yourself tagged in a tweet and your immediate thought is “this is spam…how the heck do I get rid of this?”
Or even worse, “this is just hateful and I don’t want my name associated with it.”
Well, Twitter announced last week it’s hearing your heavy sighs by experimenting with Unmentioning — an option that will allow you to untag yourself from a tweet.
Finally! The only good thing about Facebook is coming to Twitter. Okay, maybe “the only good thing” is an exaggeration, but it’s not far off.
On April 7, Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) tweeted: “How do you say “Don’t @ me,” without saying “Don’t @ me”?”
“We’re experimenting with Unmentioning—a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations—available on Web for some of you now.”
This is a blessing for anyone in the public eye who is subjected to harassment or constant mentions. Those with the test feature can hit those three little dots near a reply featuring their handle to open the menu and click “leave the conversation.”
From there, the user untagging themselves will see their handle go gray in the thread, removing them from the conversation and further notifications.
This is one of the many ways Twitter Safety is working to keep users happy and, well, safe. To deter spam, it’ll block an account that attempts to tweet too many similar things, tagging too many people, too many times in a row.
But, that type of spam is hardly the biggest troll issue on the internet, and people are continuously looking for ways to limit doomscrolling and reading negative content. If Unmentioning is successful, it should help with that.
There also now are tools to limit who can reply to a tweet, allowing a user to select: A. anyone on Twitter; B. users they follow; or C. just accounts they mention.
There’s no doubt we’ll continue to see more security features and regulations across all social media as this means of communication continues to dominate. What would you like to see change for the better?
