Twitter unveiled a new feature at CES on Wednesday that will affect all of us—hopefully for the better. Idealistically, they’re trying to clean up some of the conversations happening on Twitter by allowing users to control the audience who respond. On the compose tweet page, you will be able to select from “Global, Group, Panel, and Statement”.
As shown in the image below from Twitter: Global will allow anyone to respond, Group will allow people you follow and mention to respond, Panel will allow only the people you mention to respond, and Statement will be used for your echo chamber. *Kanye has entered the chat*
Image: Twitter
So why the sudden change to clean up the comments section? As Twitter’s director of product management, Suzanne Xie stated:
“Getting ratio’d, getting dunked on, the dynamics that happen that we think aren’t as healthy are definitely part of...our thinking about this,” Xie says. When asked if there’s a concern if the ability to limit replies could mean misinformation couldn’t be as easily rebutted, Xie gestured to the ability to quote tweet as one possible resolution, but it’s “something we’re going to be watching really closely as we experiment.”
This feature will surely be controversial—such as the “hide reply” feature that I discussed last year. As Twitter mentioned, there will surely be some positive and negative outcomes from the release of this new feature—with hopefully more positives. I do think the timing of it is interesting though. We are less than 300 days away from the Election. Twitter is surely going to be revving up heading into the Election—I know I will be.
Limiting responses isn’t a novel concept for social media. Instagram already has a feature that doesn’t allow people to reply to posts. You just double tap and keep scrolling like the mindless zombie you already are. But this isn’t Instagram. Twitter is where conversations happen—or are supposed to happen. Twitter would surely die if everyone put out Statement tweets and we all stopped conversing with each other. Could you imagine how dismal that would be?
I read a Twitter thread yesterday that made a ton of sense to me—as I’ve previously came to the same conclusion. People don’t necessarily dislike Twitter because of the unhealthy conversations happening. They dislike Twitter because no one responds. The dopamine levels are dangerously low. A Twitter user with 500 followers could post a video to their timeline and on average get 1 RT and 3 likes. Go to Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok and post that same video with the same amount of followers and they could easily see 10-100x the audience interaction. Dopamine secured.
Maybe Twitter should be focusing more on expanding their user base and helping new users gain more followers instead of trying to limit conversations for high follower count users.
My promise to you is to use the Global setting as much as possible. While you may think I am just a simpleton memehead—I built my following by having meaningful conversations on this god forsaken app. I truly enjoy conversing with people on the other side of the world on a daily basis. I don’t give a shit if you have two followers or two million followers, if you are providing value I will interact with you. I learn something new every day from you all—even the haters.
Twitter is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. The key is having healthy conversations.
R.I.P. to the ratio.
Full Disclosure: $WERAMP will be long $TWTR shares at the close today.
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