A radical change: Thanks to a feature in development, which Twitter did not wish to confirm at this time, you may not allow other users to mention you.
Will we finally be able to fight harassment on Twitter? That’s according to Jane Manchun Wong, a Hong Kong-based engineer whose passion is catching new features in popular apps before they’re released to the public. Her latest discovery concerns Twitter, she explains in a tweet on Friday, October 13. According to the young woman whose posts are feared by tech giants, Twitter is developing a way for users to control who can mention them on the social network. On the screenshot that accompanies his message, we can see that it would be possible to authorize other users to mention us – which is the case today – but above all that it would be possible either to limit the mentions to the people who follow us, or to ban them completely.
A Twitter official confirms the information before deleting the Tweet
“A deliverance”, comments one of the Internet users, because this functionality, if it is well implemented, would be a means of protecting oneself from any form of intimidation and harassment of which many accounts are regularly victims. It is indeed possible to be tagged by any Twitter account, which generates a new notification for the person concerned. In case of abuse, it is also possible to limit replies to a tweet to the people you follow, or to those mentioned in the tweet. Users can also block accounts individually, or mute certain tweets, but nothing exists for a coordinated troll attack. This feature would make it possible to stop it with a single gesture, by disabling the possibility of being mentioned.
On the downside, it would no longer be possible to reach a stranger on the platform to say hello or report something to him if the latter has deactivated this function. For the moment, it is not known when and if Twitter really intends to implement this novelty. That could be the case as Dominic Camozzi, one of the privacy officers for Twitter, first confirmed that the feature was indeed in development in a tweet, before deleting his post, reports The Verge, Friday, October 13. A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company has nothing to share…yet.