If you are on Twitter and part of a community, one thing you might face is getting tagged on tweets which you really do not want be a part of. Even if you are not interested in the tweet and did not ask to be tagged, there is no option to leave it and avoid getting bombarded by a host of notifications throughout the day. That includes trolling by unwanted elements and several spam tweets looking to gain fake numbers by using tags.
Until now.
The long-anticipated edit button is still on the horizon, but for now, the company has announced that it is testing a way for you to just “leave the conversation.” This new “Unmentioning” feature is limited to the web (for now, we do not know when it will come to the app) and will let some users remove “@” mentions of them from any tweets or threads. With this, you can have control over posts you are mentioned in (the control being the freedom to leave if you choose).
This will be useful the next time one of your friends tags you in, say, some tweet on politics that you disagree with, and you can simply be “untagged” from the tweet or later threads. Additionally, you will not be mentioned again in that conversation and thereby escape being bombarded by lots of notifications.
The feature is long overdue, considering that we had first heard of it last June. It was Twitter’s privacy designer Dominic Camozzi who unveiled it as a “concept.”
Later in August, Camozzi said users had said that the term “unmention” was confusing, so the design was tweaked and the feature came to be known as “Leave this conversation.” Now, Unmention is back on the board, as indicated by the Twitter Safety account, which it said will “help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations.”
This will also let you block specific users from mentioning you and saves you the displeasure of blocking their accounts.
This begs the question, how do I leave the conversation I have no interest in being a part of? Click on the three-dot menu next to a reply, which will offer you several options, including leaving it. Clicking on “Leave this conversation” will show a prompt, showing what leaving the conversation will entail. If you agree to move forward and Unmention yourself, your Twitter handle will turn grey so that others cannot tag you back into the thread.
