Twitter leadership has prepared it an objective of the previous few years to be more apparent about its decision-making & to offer more accurate road maps for when novel features, as well as other substantial changes, come to the podium. Just see CEO Jack Dorsey’s classic multi-tweet Facebook note when he declared the platform’s political ad ban the previous week.
In that spirit, the vice-president of Twitter of design & research, Dantley Davis, launched a catalog of features he mentions he’s eager to “explore” in 2020. They comprise a few essential modifications to how Twitter functions, mainly, how the retweet functions & how liberally users can pull others into their interactions with or without their consent.
While Davis states he’s “looking forward to” these attributes coming in 2020, he’s not formally declaring any of them — in fact, Twitter informs The Verge they’re only “ideas we’re exploring” & recommends they might not approach to pass at all:
“The features mentioned are ideas we’re exploring – explorations and experimentation have always been part of our process. We’ll have more to share should we decide to move forward with any of them,” spokesperson posts, echoing a transcribe tweet from Davis where he mentioned to them as “ideas he’s excited to explore.”
Two of these notions stand out, although. The initial is the aptitude to stop a retweet on your tweet. It could assist avoid its expand all through the more extensive Twitter network; in the occasion, you’re worried, nasty people or other awful actors desire to signal to improve it as a means to express adverse notice your way.
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Short of creating your account private, which perhaps not be in your finest attention if you’re a public-facing person or a popular public figure, this might be a helpful tool in aiding blunt the viral extent of a tweet you sense is being wielded against you or misinterpreted for reasons unconnected to the definite substance of the message. Obviously, this would not discontinue people from visiting your profile & seeing at the tweet there. However, it does appear like an authentically smart method for advertising healthier interactions and reducing toxicity.
The maker of the retweet push button, Chris Wetherell, informed BuzzFeed News in a conference that the feature, built back in 2009, was similar to handing “a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.” Twitter didn’t think through the inferences of creating a button that could enhance the reach of any random post no matter what the context is, and that the button perhaps has made Twitter poorer off overall.
Moreover, Dorsey told BuzzFeed he knows the feeling. “Definitely thinking about the incentives and ramifications of all actions, including retweet,” he said at the instance. “Retweet with the comment, for instance, might encourage more consideration before a spread.”
The additional feature Davis states that’s particularly notable is the aptitude to put off other users from linking you without your agreement. That could even fundamentally modify how Twitter functions if unexpectedly, you were no longer permitted to tag users in threads or dunk tweets devoid of getting their articulate consent beforehand. Again, this seems a lot akin to an anti-harassment feature.
Call-out customs are still a primary constituent of the conversation on Twitter, and openly stating a user in a tweet condemning them permits the people who see the tweet to follow suit more. It offers them a connection to your profile, and it makes sure that the response they do also shows up in your mentions.
That can consequence in a massive flood of pessimistic mentions that make Twitter efficiently impracticable and, often, a depressed and unbending source of online wrath.
Davis says Twitter is asking for criticism from the society on what it ought to prioritize and manners to securely apply some specific features with no messing up additional parts of the manufactured goods that do work fine today.
