{"id":222565,"date":"2019-07-11T23:16:58","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T03:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=222565"},"modified":"2019-07-11T23:16:58","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T03:16:58","slug":"twitter-taps-canada-as-test-market-for-new-hide-tweet-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/07\/11\/twitter-taps-canada-as-test-market-for-new-hide-tweet-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter taps Canada as test market for new ‘hide’ tweet feature"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Twitter\"<\/a>
The timing comes as social media platforms like Twitter have faced increasing government pressure to police their services better, particularly ahead of this fall’s federal election, and amid concerns of the vitriol spewed at some users — particularly female politicians. (Photo: Sara Kurfe\u00df\/Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA — Twitter launched an experiment in Canada Thursday to give users in this country the ability to hide replies to tweets on its social-media platform, in a bid, the company says, to give users more control over conversations.<\/p>\n

The timing comes as social media platforms like Twitter have faced increasing government pressure to police their services better, particularly ahead of this fall’s federal election, and amid concerns of the vitriol spewed at some users — particularly female politicians.<\/p>\n

Users outside Canada will be able to see the feature and be affected when it’s used, but won’t be able to use it themselves.<\/p>\n

The platform will indicate on a tweet any time a user decides to hide replies and will allow users to see what’s been hidden as a way to dissuade brands or politicians from overusing the feature.<\/p>\n

The company chose to test the new option in Canada before rolling it out elsewhere. Twitter isn’t putting a timeline on when the experiment will end.<\/p>\n

The feature is different from muting — where users can avoid seeing content from certain accounts, hashtags, and replies, for example — and blocking, where a user is prevented from seeing tweets or interacting with one account.<\/p>\n

Michele Austin, head of government and public policy at Twitter Canada, said the platform designed the feature for \u201cwhen a reply goes sideways,\u201d but a user still wants that person have access to their tweets.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwitter is public, and it’s transparent and it happens in real-time,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we’re experimenting with — and this is an experiment — is giving users more control to have a conversation that they’re seeking while at the same time keeping that transparency, so if they choose to moderate a reply and hide it, others will have access to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin said the feature is about the \u201chealth of the conversation\u201d on the platform, and could be made available to all users, depending on the feedback from Canadians.<\/p>\n

The experiment tries to balance the experience some politicians, among other users, have with \u201ctrolls\u201d on the platform, and concerns about freedom of speech when an elected official moves to block someone from reading their tweets.<\/p>\n

Last fall, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson backed down from blocking his political critics from reading his Twitter feed after several went to court claiming he had violated their constitutional right to know what a public officeholder was saying. It was the first case of its kind in Canada.<\/p>\n

In the United States, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump, an avid Twitter user, couldn’t block users for similar reasons under the U.S. constitution. That ruling sparked two more lawsuits against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for blocking users from her Twitter account.<\/p>\n

Separately on Thursday, Trump hosted a social-media summit at the White House to discuss what he called the \u201ctremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practised\u201d by certain companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not let them get away with it much longer,\u201d Trump wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA — Twitter launched an experiment in Canada Thursday to give users in this country the ability to hide replies …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":222566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222567,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222565\/revisions\/222567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}