Twitter testing new features to limit sharing tweets to 'trusted friends' only: Report

Image Credit: @a_dsgnr

Twitter recently shared three new features that it is considering bringing to its service. The three features include “Trusted Friends”, “Facets”, and a feature that will let users list certain phrases that they’d don’t want to see in their replies. According to The Verge, the new concepts are still in their infancy and are not active in development.

Trusted Friends will allow users to decide whether a tweet should be public or shared with a select few individuals, similar to how Instagram’s “Close Friends” work. Facets, on the other hand, will theoretically allow users to sort tweets into personal and professional categories or into a user’s hobbies and interests.

However, Facets will offer wider use cases as the social media giant says that other users might be able to follow someone just for their tweets on a certain topic as opposed to following the entire account. The third concept feature will allow users to specify phrases that he/she doesn’t want to see on their tweets.

We hear y'all, toggling your Tweets from public to protected, juggling alt accounts. It could be simpler to talk to who you want, when you want.

With Trusted Friends, you could Tweet to a group of your choosing. Perhaps you could also see trusted friends' Tweets first. pic.twitter.com/YxBPkEESfo — A Designer (@a_dsgnr) July 1, 2021

Followers would receive a warning not to use such language when using these phrases while replying to a tweet. While followers can ignore these warnings, the author of the tweet will have the option to pull out these violating replies and drag them to the bottom of the conversation.

The three new proposed features are not currently in active development, but the company is hoping to gather feedback about these plans while they are still in their early phases. Back in July, privacy designer Dominic Camozzi revealed a similar feature titled “unmention” that was still a work in progress.