14
votes
Twitter allows new tweets to restrict replies to "everyone, people you follow, or only people you mention"
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- Title
- Testing, testing...new conversation settings
- Word count
- 347 words
With MAGA Twitter tied in knots about the fact checking debacle, this change has gotten less attention, but is likely going to be more important to the service long term.
I’m unsure if this truly fixes the “Internet of Beefs” problem, because the main personalities who instigate most of the twitter feuding or drama are still going to leave their feeds open for everyone. And people can still get snitch tagged, so people can just attack them via their mentions instead of in reply to specific posts, so I’m not sure it addresses bullying adequately either.
It's funny if you think about as Twitter turning "don't @ me" into a native function.
I suppose this isn't so much done for the sake of quelling "beef" (that would require actual intervention, at this point) but moreso for the sake of brand or otherwise corporate Twitter, so that their replies don't automatically fill up with derision and scorn at their expense. Might also partially be aimed at reducing the possibility of misinformation spreading in response to official/verified communications on the platform, and I suppose I could see the logic behind that.
Silly me, assuming moves might have been motivated by a desire to make the platform friendlier and safer for the regular people in it. Of course they just wanted to lick advertiser boots better. What was I thinking!?
Well y'know, you can always make it more advertiser-friendly and then tell yourself that it actually also really benefits your end-user, they just don't fully realize it yet. *coughRedditcough*
The funny thing is, Reddit is actually great for predisposing people to part with their money. If you think of marketing as an art of manufacturing wants and desires, Reddit's enthusiast subreddits are unbeatable. Kalita or Hario couldn't pay /r/coffee enough for the kind of publicity they get through there.
The problem, of course, is that this is hard to monetize. You could work through affiliate marketing links, but that's a lossy process since most people who might have been inspired to buy something due to Reddit won't be clicking through Reddit to buy it, they'll just search directly.
Twitter did show interest into making itself into a protocol, and the more it adds moderation and fact checking tools, the more I wonder if they plan to incorporate that into that network, or if that is still on the table.