People get so brave when they’re hiding behind a username and a digital screen.
With the usage of social media running rampant in the daily lives of society, some people (probably with deep-rooted unresolved anger issues) unfortunately end up using these platforms in a careless manner, lashing out without policing their own behaviours and a total disregard to how it would affect other users.
Twitter, being the only current social media platform that works like, say, an online digital diary, is often used by users to vent their frustrations or voice out opinions. And the thing is, not all of someone’s opinions can be accepted by someone else. So imagine millions of people on the internet each with their own point of views getting into a heated debate about a certain issue.
It can get pretty ugly pretty fast.
To tackle this issue, Twitter will now prompt users to think twice about their “potentially harmful or offensive” replies.
Having tested the feature last year, Twitter said that the test showed a reduction in the number of offensive replies. The company also said that it would roll the prompts out to English language accounts using Twitter on Apple or Android.
After testing and improving prompts that ask you to review a potentially harmful or offensive reply, we learned that this feature can help encourage more meaningful convos.
We’re now rolling out these prompts on iOS and soon Android. https://t.co/GdnEGrIvfM pic.twitter.com/5hrK0mrd8f
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 5, 2021
The even cooler part is that the platform targets user behaviour, where the prompts are designed to consider the nature of the relationship between the accounts that tweet and the accounts that reply.
Twitter said in a blog post,
“If two accounts follow and reply to each other often, there’s a higher likelihood that they have a better understanding of preferred tone of communication.”
Honestly, while this is a ground-breaking advanced feature, it’s sad that it needs to exist in the first place.
*Cover image via Magisto
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