A Twitter employee has tweeted (of course) about a new tool that will enable you to hide replies to your own tweet with the goal being healthier conversations on the platform.
Twitter is trying at least, but the replies would still be available to anybody who wanted to see them through a menu option. It's effectively turning you into a moderator so you can suppress situations where things are getting inflamed and out-of-hand.
If we were being particularly cynical about the development, it doesn't really fix the problem of abusive tweeting and it basically leaves things up to users. While that has some value in principle, how many people would actually bother two hide replies unless it was a particularly difficult situation?
The potential feature was revealed by developer Jane Wong (below) but further clarification was provided by Twitter product manager Michelle Haq who added that the company often hears from heavy tweeters who want to protect conversations.
"We want to empower [people who start conversations] to make them...as healthy as possible by giving them some control," she said. A public test is planned, Haq added.
The much-wanted "edit tweet" feature seems like it's not going to happen, but last month Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke about a feature that would enable people to add notes to old tweets - perhaps to clarify something or retract an earlier statement. The clarification would then appear alongside the original tweet.
Of course, you can currently clarify things using a second threaded tweet, but this doesn't appear alongside the first tweet. Dorsey's plan would certainly make things a lot clearer and possibly would remove some heat from situations where tweets need further clarification.