Twitter Now Lets Users Change 'Who Can Reply' To A Tweet After Tweeting
Twitter has updated its 'who can reply' feature to allow users the option to set or change the settings to a Tweet even after posting. Twitter users can be prone to facing backlash on the platform, so Twitter has been slowly adding additional user controls over time. Furthermore, better self-moderation tools are only one of the changes that Twitter has been making recently, as the company also looks at additional ways to monetize Tweets for itself and creators.
In August of last year, Twitter released a feature that allowed people to decide who could reply to their Tweets. This option needed to be selected prior to posting, but it did allow for greater control over who could interact with posts made on the platform. Before posting, Twitter provides three options for the post, with the ability to choose between everyone, people they follow, and only those mentioned in the Tweet. Twitter's goal was to focus on the user's personal space and give them the ability to fine-tune their experience.
Almost one year later and Twitter has now updated the feature with a small, but useful change. Now users can change who can reply to their Tweets even after posting. This could be important to use in a couple of different scenarios. For example, if the user forgot to specify who could reply prior to posting, all they would need to do is make a very simple change to the Tweet. There could also be circumstances where a user is getting a little more backlash than they expected, allowing them to cut people off from replying. There have been plenty of instances of abuse and attacks in the past, with this tweak likely part of Twitter's goal to help make the platform more of a safe space.
If the Tweet has already been posted, but the "who can reply" setting wasn't changed, there's no need to delete the post and start over again. To change the setting, go to the Tweet and hit the "..." in the top right corner. There will be a "change who can reply" option and when tapped, the user will be presented with the same three settings mentioned above. It doesn't look like replies will be deleted after the user changes the setting, however, which means whatever replies were there prior to the setting being altered will remain visible.
While many continue to advocate for Twitter to make other changes, like an edit button for typos and small grammatical mistakes, it looks like Twitter is busy working on a variety of moderation improvements. Most of these changes have been designed to improve the wellbeing and safety of users, which is something that's only likely to benefit the Twitter platform as a whole.
Source: Twitter Safety/Twitter