This is a terrible idea – Twitter testing the ability to choose who can reply to your tweets

Twitter’s gone and done something else (again) instead of giving us all the Edit button we so desperately want (and probably shouldn’t ever get). The social media service is testing the ability to choose who can reply to a tweet. Any tweet.

A few minutes of thought should make it clear that this is a terrible idea. The ability to limit replies in your tweets will effectively put a stop to getting ratioed. That’s… not a good thing. If you’re being ratioed, you probably screwed up pretty bad.

Building a better bubble

The test is currently running but with a limited number of users able to control their replies for now. Odds are you won’t get to check it out for yourself. You may get to see someone else using it, though.

The way it works is that you’ll be able to choose, when you tweet, who can reply. It can be limited to those who follow you, or just those who were mentioned in the tweet. If nobody is mentioned, you’ll basically stop anyone from replying to your tweets. If you’re not on the list of approved respondents, the ‘Reply’ button’ll be greyed out. Seems… straightforward enough.

Others can still retweet, quote-tweet, like and view the tweets — but replies will be kept under control. Which, as we’ve said, is a really awful idea. Limiting discussion in this manner will benefit the more toxic element on Twitter at least as much as the folks looking to keep to themselves and their circle.

Imagine awful opinions being posted online with no way to directly contest or point out just how wrong said opinion is. That’s… pretty much the whole point of Twitter. Seriously though, no matter who uses this feature, it’ll just reinforce the various bubbles folks live in — insulating everyone from anti-vaxxers to racists to people who think that pineapple on pizza is a good thing.