Can you control who can reply to your tweets?

Twitter is looking for a way to combat its trolling problem, where people intentionally post mean, incendiary or off-topic content in order to offend or elicit a negative response. It’s a problem that has caused many a user, including high-profile celebrities, to quit the platform in recent years. 

Thankfully, Twitter may have hit upon a solution. The platform announced at the annual Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas that it will be testing a new feature that will allow users to decide who can reply to a tweet before they post it. The feature will present four reply-blocking options: anyone can reply; only people the user follows can reply; only people tagged in the tweet can reply; or no one can reply.

Twitter Director of Product Suzanne Xie explained: “We thought, well, what if we could actually put more control into the author's hands before the fact? Give them really a way to control the conversation space, as they're actually composing a tweet?”