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Twitter is dealing with harassment with a 'don't @ me' feature

The platform is testing a new "unmentioning" feature to help you see yourself out of a conversation.

Twitter

Twitter is testing "unmentioning," a feature which lets you leave a conversation.

Photo: Joshua Hoehne via Unsplash

Twitter is officially letting you say "don’t @ me" — and now it actually means something. The platform announced Thursday that it's testing a feature called "unmentioning," which helps quiet your noisy notifications by letting you leave a conversation you have no interest in being part of.

The feature is currently being tested by a small group of users and is only available on the web. Twitter said the feature is "a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations." Users that have this feature can select the menu next to the reply button on a tweet and choose the option to “get you out of this conversation." Users who choose this will be untagged from the conversation, as well as prevent further mentions and notifications. When used, your Twitter handle will be grayed out on that post.

Dominic Camozzi, a senior privacy designer at Twitter, first previewed the unmention feature on his page last June. The feature is a step in combatting harassment by controlling "unwanted attention," Camozzi previously tweeted.

Twitter has been working on several other anti-abuse features, including "Safety Mode," a tool which automatically blocks accounts for seven days if they comment using harmful language. Twitter began testing the mode in September and expanded in February. These features add to one that allows users to limit who can reply to their posts that was rolled out in 2020 and expanded in 2021.

Anti-harassment features aren't the only way that Twitter is giving more power to users. The platform announced Tuesday that it's finally working on an edit button — a feature so long-awaited that Twitter made an April Fools' joke out of it. But in a quieter move, Twitter changed the way deleted tweets show up when embedded on third-party websites, leaving a blank box behind rather than text. Though Twitter Senior Product Manager Eleanor Harding said the change was to "better respect when people have chosen to delete their tweets," it makes it possible for public figures to erase newsworthy statements as if they never happened.

Nat Rubio-Licht

Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

twitterupdateproduct updateunmentioninganti-abusespamharassment
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