Not everyone is comfortable tweeting out their feelings, opinions, or random thoughts either because they don’t want them to come back to haunt them or they don’t understand the privacy settings of the platform as well. Twitter now wants to try out some privacy tools that may get users to tweet more as they get more control over those that can see their tweets and until when they can see them. The social media platform may be rolling out these tools soon but for a small user group only.
Bloomberg shares that Twitter executives say that these privacy tools are related to “social privacy” or how users are able to manage their reputations and identities on the platform. They are hoping that by giving users more control over these things and when they understand the privacy settings available to them, they will be more comfortable tweeting. Introducing tools like this will also reduce the manual things that some do right now like painstakingly going back to old tweets and deleting them or blocking certain people to remove them from their followers.
Here are some of the potential privacy-focused products that they may be testing out. Twitter may soon let users archive their tweets after 30, 60, or 90 days, or even after a full year. The user will still be able to see the tweets but followers will not see them anymore after the prescribed time. Users will also soon be able to remove followers without necessarily blocking them and they plan to test this out later this month.
Users will also soon be able to limit who can see the tweets that they liked – everyone, just the user’s followers, or select groups. There doesn’t seem to still be an option that only you can see what you liked. Twitter will also soon be able to remove themselves from public conversations. Currently, only the person sending the tweet can choose who to mention. They are planning to test out this feature before the end of the year.
These features can help users who don’t want some of their tweets to haunt them later on when they go for job interviews or they run for public office, etc. But of course, the Internet never forgets so it’s still best to always think before you tweet.
