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Twitter bids to beat the trolls by introducing a feature that Facebook has already had for years

Twitter is trying to detoxify its notorious platform, and may finally have an option that’s been available on Facebook for ages.

Twitter has announced that it is exploring some new possibilities to reduce “unwanted attention” on the site, with one of the potential new features being ‘unmentioning’ – similar to the ‘untag’ option that Facebook has offered for years.

Dominic Camozzi, a privacy designer for the social network, revealed the brand’s musings in a thread published on June 15:

Along with the ability to unmention yourself when you are tagged in a tweet, Camozzi also floated further controls over your mentions, such as blocking specific accounts from mentioning you or blocking your handle from being mentioned altogether for a specified period of time.

This isn’t the first change of its kind on Twitter, as it has become increasingly popular for people to restrict replies on their tweets, in a change that was also welcomed to reduce abusive responses.

Read More: Twitter Blue – Features unveiled for the social media site’s rumoured subscription service

Though the restrictions to mentioning users’ handles remains just an ‘early concept’, Twitter is set to introduce several other new features to its site, albeit at a price.

Twitter Blue is a subscription service for the platform, currently only available in Canada and Australia, that will entitle users to extra options such as “undo tweet” (a timer that allows you to reflect on your tweet before it’s published), the ability to organise bookmarks, and access to Scroll, which creates easy-to-read threads from news stories.

Related: Twitter Blue is worse than a waste of money, it’s a waste of promise

Evidently Twitter is belatedly starting to ameliorate the user experience on its site, but there’s a high tightrope that it must walk between allowing free discussion and preventing unreasonable insults or full-on abuse. By permitting users to set their own limits in this way, the brand presumably hopes that a level of personal customisation and privacy is the answer to this conundrum. Whether that’s true or not, only time will tell.

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