Twitter expanded 'Hide Replies' by giving developers Access to the Feature

Twitter expands 'Hide Replies' feature for Developers

Microblogging site Twitter has expanded its Hide Replies feature for its developer community to curb threat of online trolls.

Purpose: Developers will be able to create tools that automatically hide controversial tweets based on factors mentioned by the user viz. tweets that include offensive, hateful or racist keywords.

How is it possible?

By using the new API endpoint.

Hide Replies

Interested developers can freely participate to access APIs through Twitter Developer Labs. Though, they have to sign up using an approved developer account. They can also collaborate with the microblogging site through its community forums to build new endpoints.

Example

Jigsaw has integrated Twitter’s new endpoint with its Perspective API, which uses AI to score tweets based on their toxicity. The integration will automatically hide replies that exceed a certain toxic threshold (.94).

This will save time for the users who currently have to analyze through the comments to hide replies.

Jigsaw is a unit within Google that forecasts and confronts emerging threats, creating future-defining research and technology to keep our world safer.

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Future Perspective

Currently, Twitter automatically hides replies by keywords or Twitter handles. Soon, it will add support for hiding replies from likely troll or bot accounts — including tweets from user accounts created too recently or from accounts with few followers.

Tweets & Replies

In November 2019, Twitter had rolled out the feature globally which lets users hide replies they think are irrelevant, off-topic, or annoying and changing the course of the discussion on the platform.

Anyone can choose to hide replies to their tweets. Everyone can see and engage with hidden replies by tapping the grey icon that will appear on the tweets.

Megha Jain

Engg & Freelance Author

Straight forward