Minutes after Twitter‘s Muted words feature was enabled on Sunday, the company went and disabled it — sparking rumors that it was actually an accident. This new feature enabled account holders to block certain keywords and phrases from showing up on their feed. If the feature actually turns out to be what we are thinking it will, it could go a long way towards helping users feel safer on the platform.
Muted words, which appears to have been created in preparation for the huge number of trolls and other issues that have been plaguing the platform of late, was spotted by iOS users when it went online for a duration of time on Sunday. According to a trusted source, the function was enabled ahead of schedule accidentally, but will likely be incorporated in the social networking platform, soon.
Twitter’s Muted words feature will come under the ‘Notifications’ menu in settings. Once the user turns the feature on, they will get the option to create their own list of unwanted words and phrases.
Though it is still not clear how exactly it will work, but from what we can gauge from the name of the feature, it appears as if the muted hashtags will be filtered from showing up in the timeline and search results of the user.
Twitter actually introduced a feature called ‘mute’ that helped the user to block certain users and accounts from appearing on your time-line in order to prevent abuse. The feature was launched a couple of years ago, however, the company still continues to struggle with its attempts to curb harassment on the platform.
It is being hoped that Twitter’s Muted words will be capable of filtering out words and phrases that the users don’t want to see and will help the users feel safer on the platform. While there are certainly going to be ways trolls can work around it, the feature might help users get the better of pranksters by determining which words or phrases are a no-no upon their timelines.
This accidental feature launch takes place just a few weeks after the rumors of Twitter being purchased by Google, Disney and Salesforce first surfaced. While Google and Disney backed out soon, Salesforce decided that Twitter was not its cup of tea after further deliberations. There was speculation that trolls and abuse had a significant role to play in making Twitter and less valuable acquirable asset.
As an audience we can only hope for the best and wait for new updates every now and then. Twitter’s Muted words feature would be a step in a right direction, and we can now but wait to see when that step is actually taken.
