Twitter Testing Feature That Restricts Tweet Audience

Twitter has announced that it is testing a new feature which allows users to share their tweets with specific people.

“Twitter Circle” allowed users to restrict tweets to 150 specific people or less as a group.

“Some Tweets are for everyone & others are just for people you’ve picked,” Twitter said. “We’re now testing Twitter Circle, which lets you add up to 150 people who can see your Tweets when you want to share with a smaller crowd. Some of you can create your own Twitter Circle beginning today!”

The feature expanded upon a user’s ability to restrict replies to, retweets of, and likes of a tweet to specific people the user chose.

The platform experimented with various features that limited the audience of tweets for “safety” purposes.

This month Tech Crunch reported that Twitter advocated for user “safety” with promoted third-party apps on the platform using “Twitter Toolbox.”

“The Twitter Toolbox offers more solutions to improve your experience on Twitter,” Twitter said at the time. According to Twitter, the tool was created after discussions with developers. “[Developers] want users and we want to provide them with the right users at the right time,” Amir Shevat, the head of product for Twitter’s developer platform, told TechCrunch.

Twitter is also available introduced a “Safety Mode” last year that sought to “limit unwelcome interactions on Twitter.”

A prominent feature called “downvoting” allowed users to “downvote” posts they disagreed with. The platform alleged that downvotes were not public, but they highlighted “content people want to see.”

“Downvotes aren’t public, but they’ll help inform us of the content people want to see,” Twitter said.

Twitter told MRC Free Speech America after the feature was released that the “experiment” was in its learning stage and did “not impact how replies are ordered.” 

“We are still in the learning stage of this experiment and are looking to gain a better understanding of how Reply Downvoting could help us better surface the most relevant content for people on Twitter in the future. At this stage in the experiment down votes are private and do not impact how replies are ordered,” the platform stated.

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