Twitter Introduces More Privacy Option

Twitter announced on Thursday that it is planning new privacy-related features that will give more privacy options to the users, an effort to make users more comfortable interacting and sharing on the social network.

Twitter reportedly includes the option to archive old tweets so they’re not visible to other users after a given period of time (like 30, 60, or 90 days or a full year). They also include possible options to limit who can see which tweets you’ve liked, to let people remove themselves from a conversation on Twitter, and to let people remove followers without outright blocking them.

According to Bloomberg, the new features are described as a suite of “social privacy” changes that are aimed at making people more comfortable engaging on Twitter. Internal research at Twitter apparently found that many users don’t even understand whether their accounts are set to public or private — something the company will begin asking users to review in September.

There’s no timeline for some of the changes, and the archive option, in particular, is in the “concept phase,” according to Bloomberg. But Twitter reportedly plans to start letting people remove themselves from conversations by the end of the year and to let people remove followers (as opposed to soft blocking them) starting this month.

Twitter spokesperson in a statement said “At Twitter, privacy is more than what we do with your data, it’s also about how we help you feel safe and in control of how you show up on Twitter,”

“We understand that there’s no one size fits all approach to privacy, so we’re excited to roll out more features and tools to empower people on Twitter to customize their experience. Our focus on social privacy is inspired by feedback we received through a global research study we conducted to better understand people’s perceptions of and needs for privacy around the globe. We’ll begin testing some of these features as soon as next week.”

As Bloomberg acknowledges, the privacy changes replicate sometimes clunky workarounds that many users have already adopted, including external services that delete tweets after a certain period of time.