• by Gavin O'Malley , March 1, 2019

“With this feature, the person who started a conversation could choose to hide replies to their tweets,” Michelle Yasmeen Haq, a product manager at Twitter, tweeted on Thursday. “The hidden replies would be viewable by others through a menu option.”

Twitter already offers several tools to keep conversations healthy, but the company recognized that it could better.  

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

Regarding the forthcoming “Hide Tweet” feature, Yasmeen Haq added: “The 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.”

The new feature isn’t expected to debut for at least a month or two. When it does, it’s not clear exactly which users will have access to it.

In her tweet, Yasmeen Haq alluded to “heavy Tweeters,” which could be interpreted to mean that the feature will only be made available to those with larger followings, like influencers.

Like Facebook, Twitter has struggled to provide a safe and secure environment for users.

Already this year, the company was forced to warn Android users that their private tweets were potentially exposed.

Late last year, Twitter alerted users to a bug that potentially exposed the country code of their personal phone numbers, as well as whether their accounts had been locked by the social giant.