(Hypebot) — As the Twittersphere has become increasingly toxic over recent years, its user base has plateaued somewhat. This has led the company to develop some major changes to the platform’s RT feature which they plan to roll out in 2020.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
The luster has come off Twitter in the last few years as it’s gotten nastier and nastier to the point where its usage has plateaued. The company has been paying attention though, and has indicated that it will be making at least some changes in the coming year. Dantley Davis, Twitter’s vice president of design and research, released a list of ideas that he’s looking at, and there’s one regarding the Twitter RT, in particular, that may bring some civility back to the platform.
The list of features includes:
- Remove me from this conversation
- Don’t allow RT of this tweet
- Don’t allow people to @mention me without my permission
- Remove this @mention from this conversation
- Tweet this only to: hashtag, interest, these friends
Of the above, the “don’t allow RT of this tweet” looks the most interesting. I’m sure that the powers that be at Twitter never saw what was coming when they launched the RT feature as it seemed so innocent at the time, but this has been one of the biggest reasons for negativity on the platform as tweets are spread like wildfire, many times taken completely out of context.
The ability to limit this spread could go a long way to limiting the flame wars that frequently start with what seems to be a harmless tweet. Add to this a “don’t allow people to @mention me without my permission” feature could put a stop to things going viral when they’re only intended for the eyes of followers.
As far as music is concerned, Twitter has fallen down the list of importance for most artists and musicians, largely replaced by the much friendlier and more effective Instagram. I’m not sure that implementing any of the above-mentioned features would make that much of a difference in that regard, but it sure would make spending time on the platform a bit more pleasant.
