Twitter planning new privacy measures, says report

A new report claims that Twitter is planning to test new social privacy features to make people more comfortable on its platform.

According to Bloomberg:

Twitter Inc. is planning to test new privacy-related features aimed at giving users greater control over their follower lists and who can see their posts and likes, an effort to make people more comfortable interacting and sharing on the social network.

The report says the tools are related to a "social privacy" initiative, relating to how users maintain their reputation and identity on the platform, including lists of followers, tweets they like, and more.

It comes as Twitter recently announced a new Safety Mode designed to stop unwanted and abusive replies from ever reaching users. From Wednesday:

Twitter has announced Safety Mode, a new feature that will automatically black people who it thinks are being abusive in replies to tweets.

According to a blog post, Twitter's move is designed to reduce the amount of spam and hurtful replies people receive.

Safety Mode is a feature that temporarily blocks accounts for seven days for using potentially harmful language — such as insults or hateful remarks — or sending repetitive and uninvited replies or mentions. When the feature is turned on in your Settings, our systems will assess the likelihood of a negative engagement by considering both the Tweet's content and the relationship between the Tweet author and replier. Our technology takes existing relationships into account, so accounts you follow or frequently interact with will not be autoblocked.

The feature is designed not to block people you follow or usually interact with and offers users a list of temporarily blocked accounts for review. A new social privacy mode should hopefully give more users control over their accounts on devices like iPhone 12 and beyond.