New Twitter privacy tools will let you hide old tweets. What else changes

Called ‘social privacy’ tools by Twitter executives, these features help users manage their reputations and identities on the social media site. And one of the major changes being introduced is the ability to hide past tweets, along with the ability to edit follower lists.

Recently, Twitter pulled down its Instagram Stories-like feature called Fleets that allowed to post short-term posts that disappeared after a while. The feature didn’t gain the desired traction on the platform, but Twitter believes this will work with tweets.

The new privacy feature will delete posts after a designated period of time. This will be a blessing for people who do not wish for their tweets to stay online forever. Instead of manually digging through hundreds of old tweets to delete them, users can archive their tweets after some time so that they are not visible to others after the specified time period.

The company is considering various time limits for hiding posts, ranging from 30, 60, and 90 days to a full year. This feature still in the concept phase and it will be a while before it sees the light of day.

Twitter is also planning to allow users to remove followers in a more straightforward manner rather than opt for workarounds. Right now, this can only be done by blocking the follower. The site will start testing this feature by this month.

To allow greater control over the image a user projects on their followers, Twitter will bring options to choose who can see their liked tweets. It can be everyone, just their followers, or select groups. There is no launch date set for this feature either.

Twitter will also let users whether they want to be mentioned in a tweet or not. As of now, it can be managed only by the user who has posted the tweet.

The motive behind these changes is to encourage people to post more on Twitter. Hiding posts will alleviate fears of a tweet coming back to haunt at a critical time, like while applying for jobs or colleges, or contesting elections. Posts that disappear after a while have been immensely successful on Instagram and Snapchat, but Twitter’s attempt at it failed. Bringing it back for tweets is a way to rejuvenate Fleets in a different form.

Other privacy feature will also encourage more participation from users. Like the ability to remove mentions and closer control on followers list will make the platform more welcoming to users. Twitter is expecting it to result in increased footfall on the site.

Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in March that he wanted to “double the number of features per employee that directly drive” either user growth or revenue.