Twitter Updates: Safety Mode, Super Follows, & more

Twitter has announced significant developments, to improve the quality of conversations along with the introduction of a monetization tool for creators and publishers.

The announcements were made at the virtual Analyst Day, and featured commentary from Kayvon Beykpour - Product Lead, and Dantley Davis - Head of Design & Research, shedding light on the updates by Twitter.

Safety Mode

Safety Mode is a new tool being developed by the platform to protect users from abusive or potentially harmful or spammy behavior of bad actors engaging in an insulting or hateful manner.

When the Safety Mode is turned on, Twitter will detect abusive or spammy accounts and will limit their ability to engage with the user for seven days. Users can also toggle on the 'Auto block, and mute' feature to block accounts violating Twitter policies, and mute accounts using hate speech.

Users will be notified about such negative replies to their Tweets, and they will also have the option to preview accounts that are detected as potentially abusive or spammy.

Birdwatch

First found to be testing in the pilot program, Birdwatch a feature enabling a group of users to provide context on Tweets that may contain misleading information is currently being developed further.

Contributors to the Twitter Birdwatch can create notes to explain why they think a Tweet is misleading, and include correct information according to their knowledge. The general users can then rate the quality of the notes.

All notes on a disputed Tweet would be listed below it, users would see labels such as 'Currently rated helpful' and the username of the contributor, along with the note.

Tweets that contain notes would be a part of the Birdwatch Public Log, a separate tab on the Twitter platform. The platform mentions Birdwatch is an attempt to decentralize moderation, and explore the community-driven assessment of misleading information.

Also Read: Twitter shares updates on developments of performance advertising offerings

Identity

The platform is expanding the types of accounts available for classification that differentiate between people, bots (automated accounts), and businesses on the platform.

Users would see a label signifying the type of account when they see a profile, in the bio section. Labels such as 'Automated Account' or 'Restaurant' will indicate who or what the user is interacting with.

Timeline Sorting

The 'Sparkle' button that lets users switch between reverse chronological order of Tweets and top Tweets, has been shifted to a toggle between the latest Tweets and the Tweets that would be most relevant to the user according to Twitter.

Communities

Communities is a new product experience being developed by Twitter to enable users to form, discover, and participate in conversations based on select topics of their interest or geographies.

The product seems to have sharp similarities to subreddits, topic-based communities on Reddit. There is not much information available on the development by Twitter, but typically the communities only host conversations around the topic and follow certain guidelines unique to each community.

Super Follows

Super Follows is the most important update that can have a significant impact on the platform. The product is a tool that can enable creators and publishers to monetize their presence on their platform and enable users to support or incentivize their favorites in exchange for their content and a few perks.

The creator will earn monetary rewards with each Super Follow, and the user will receive perks such as supporter badge, subscriber-only newsletters, exclusive content, and discounts.

The creators having Super Follows will also have additional conversational control on their Tweets, wherein only such followers can view and reply to their Tweets.