Twitter is Experimenting With a New Feature that Limits Who may Mention You in the App

Twitter is working on a new toggle that will let you choose whether to fully prevent anyone from referencing your @handle or simply allow those who you follow in the app to do so. This will give you more control over who sees your tweets.

The new option, which Twitter is presently testing with, would allow you greater control over how people may engage with your tweets, as you can see in this graphic shared by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong.

An "Allow Others to Mention you" checkbox at the top would prevent others from using your @handle at all.

This would probably just disable any mention of your handle, similar to Twitter's recently introduced "Unmention" feature, which enables you to abandon Twitter talks that you no longer wish to participate in.

As you can see in this illustration, if you select to quit a conversation using this option, your handle link inside that thread is then disabled. After that, others may still use your handle, but it won't link to your profile and you won't be informed of it.

You could probably not prohibit others from using your @handle in their tweets, but it would no longer be an active mention as such if you choose to prevent anyone from mentioning you at all using this new option.

Additionally, a new option has been added that allows you to restrict mentions to only those you follow on the app.

Over the past year and a half, Twitter has introduced a number of audience control tools for tweets, including unmention, as previously mentioned, as well as restricted replies, Twitter Circles for private group chats, Safety Mode, which automatically blocks Spammy or abusive replies, and Communities for closed, topical discussions.

Together, these factors may significantly alter how Twitter operates, shifting it away from its "global town square" model, which gives everyone a chance to participate in relevant topics, and toward a more compartmentalized collection of interesting but segregated tweet chats.

This could be advantageous. All of these features were offered by Twitter to assist users avoid the drawbacks of public posting. Many users choose not to express their ideas on the app out of concern that they would be "cancelled" if they say something inappropriate.

According to a Pew Research survey from last year, around 25% of Twitter users in the US are responsible for 97% of all tweets.

That much passive Twitter usage is probably due, in large part, to the fear of being criticized for saying the incorrect thing. Since Twitter is a public forum, any mistakes you make may be instantly and widely amplified for everyone to see.

More control choices help alleviate this worry while also giving users more ways to block trolls, spammers, creeps, and other persons who try to stir up trouble in the app.

Which is wonderful because users should be able to control how they use Twitter and sometimes you just don't need to be amused by the garbage that people want to post.

Although there can also be worries about prominent people stifling opposing viewpoints and utilizing such tools to push particular narratives among their audiences.

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