Twitter to develop feature that lets you hide replies to your tweets

Twitter, on Friday, announced that it is working on a new feature that would enable users of the social networking service to hide replies to their tweets.

The latest feature will bring a drastic change in how users control their conversations on the platform. While this would not let the user permanently hide the replies, it would make it difficult for the other party to access the original conversation.

“People who start interesting conversations on Twitter are really important to us, and we want to empower them to make the conversations they start as healthy as possible by giving them some control,” explains Michelle Yasmeen Haq, a senior product manager at the company, in a series of tweets.

“We already see people trying keep their conversations healthy by using block, mute, and report, but these tools don’t always address the issue. Block and mute only change the experience of the blocker, and report only works for the content that violates our policies” she added.

With this feature, the users will be able to tap the “share” icon on Twitter and choose “hide Tweet” to close down replies.

According to Yasmeen Haq, the latest feature will let Twitter “balance the product experience between the original Tweeter and the audience. Transparency of the hidden replies would allow the community to notice and call out situations where people use the feature to hide content they disagree with.”

Hiding the replies will let followers know that the conversation has become sidetracked and is no more relevant.

Similar features are also provided by YouTube, Reddit and other social networking forums.