Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Sep 01, 2025

‘Trusted Friends’ and ‘hateful’ language filter: Twitter’s concept features to allow users to choose who & what they want to hear

‘Trusted Friends’ and ‘hateful’ language filter: Twitter’s concept features to allow users to choose who & what they want to hear

Proposed features that would enable Twitter users to limit their audience to only “trusted friends” and choose phrases to be blacklisted have prompted accusations of encouraging “echo chambers” against the social media platform.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, designer Andrew Courter noted that Twitter is “exploring a bunch of ways to control who can see your Tweets.” He shared three such early design concept features to solicit public discussion and feedback, but pointed out that the company is “not building these yet.”

With the ‘Trusted Friends’ feature, comparable to Instagram’s ‘Close Friends’ functionality for its stories, users can “control who can see” their tweets – potentially toggling privacy settings to tailor their audience according to what they put out.

Reasoning that it “could be simpler to talk to who you want, when you want” instead of “juggling alt accounts,” Courter tweeted that “perhaps (users) could also see trusted friends’ tweets first” in their timelines – as opposed to the current algorithm-determined and chronologically-ordered ‘Home’.


According to TechCrunch, it would build on already existing controls that let original posters pick who is able to ‘reply’ to their tweets – those mentioned in the tweet, people they follow, or the default option, ‘everyone’. However, that feature left the actual tweet visible and shareable by anyone.

The second proposed change, under the working name ‘Facets’, would allow people to categorize tweets according to context by “embracing an obvious truth: we’re different people in different contexts” with respect to friends, family, work, and public lives.

According to Courter, this concept lets people tweet “from distinct personas within 1 account,” while enabling other individuals to “follow the whole account” or just the ‘facets’ they find interesting. For instance, a personal persona could relate to hobbies, while a professional persona is work-related.

Meanwhile, the third feature would allow users to filter out phrases deemed to be “hateful, hurtful and violent” or considered “profanity” that they would “prefer not to see” in replies to their tweets. They can also choose “automatic actions” like “moving violating replies to the bottom of the conversation” and “muting accounts that violate twice” despite the prompts.


Followers would then see these phrases “highlighted” in their replies and a prompt nudges them to “learn why” or they can just “ignore the guidance,” according to Courter. Likening it to a “spellcheck” against “sounding like a jerk,” he noted that it could help “set boundaries” for conversations.

The proposals drew a mixed reaction from the platform’s users, with several people raising concerns that the prospect of tweeters picking and choosing their audiences and the replies they would prefer to receive increased the likelihood of “echo chambers” and “virtue signalling.”



“Twitter is a public forum. It’s what makes it different. Close the communities enough, and it gets turned into a Facebook clone. One Facebook style social network is definitely enough,” one person tweeted.

When some users pointed out that the features would “block accounts,” Courter responded that “blocks are underused” and claimed there is a “need to normalize blocking and teach how it works.”

In response to Courter’s contention that the reply filters would “help people be their best selves,” a number of people agreed that it would “set a model for empathetic phrasing,” but others said it sounded like “another attempt to pressure users into ‘acceptable’ speech.”

Other users said the concept of tying different personas to one account had been explored previously by Google with their defunct ‘Circles+’ with one person saying it would lead to individual privacy concerns that are not present with the current workaround of using alternate accounts.


Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
Ukrainian Nationalist Politician Andriy Parubiy Assassinated in Lviv
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
French and Korean Nuclear Majors Clash As EU Launches Foreign Subsidy Probe
EU Stands Firm on Digital Rules as Trump Warns of Retaliation
Getting Ready for the 3rd Time in Its History, Germany Approves Voluntary Military Service for Teenagers
Argentine President Javier Milei Evacuated After Stones Thrown During Campaign Event
Denmark Confronts U.S. Diplomat Over Covert Trump-Linked Influence in Greenland
Starmer Should Back Away from ECHR, Says Jack Straw
Trump Demands RICO Charges Against George Soros and Son for Funding Violent Protests
Taylor Swift Announces Engagement to NFL Star Travis Kelce
France May Need IMF Bailout, Warns Finance Minister
Chinese AI Chipmaker Cambricon Posts Record Profit as Beijing Pushes Pivot from Nvidia
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
Ukraine Finally Allows Young Men Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Two to Leave the Country
The Porn Remains, Privacy Disappears: How Britain Broke the Internet in Ten Days
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Welcome to The Definition of Insanity: Germany Edition
Just a reminder, this is Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris.
Spotify’s Strange Move: The Feature Nobody Asked For – Returns
Manhunt in Australia: Armed Anti-Government Suspect Kills Police Officers Sent to Arrest Him
China Launches World’s Most Powerful Neutrino Detector
How Beijing-Linked Networks Shape Elections in New York City
Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska Fled War To US, Stabbed To Death
Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Monopoly
2 Australian Police Shot Dead In Encounter In Rural Victoria State
Vietnam Evacuates Hundreds of Thousands as Typhoon Kajiki Strikes; China’s Sanya Shuts Down
UK Government Delays Decision on China’s Proposed London Embassy Amid Concerns Over Redacted Plans
A 150-Year Tradition to Be Abolished? Uproar Over the Popular Central Park Attraction
×