The feature is being tested on iOS currently.
Twitter: Microblogging platform Twitter has been bringing a lot of changes to its platform off late, likely so that it can cope with its competitors. Among these slews of changes is a feature that is seemingly not being well received. The platform has been testing a feature on iOS that would let people slide into a user’s DMs straight from the user’s tweet. For this, a link or shortcut (likely in the form of an icon), is being added to people’s tweets.
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Now, while this feature can be a good move to “start a conversation” in an easier manner, according to Twitter, for a platform so riddled with harassment and abuse, this could hardly prove to be a positive step. In the recent years, Twitter has seen a manifold increase in open harassment and hurling of abuse by some users, despite many efforts by the platform to curb such acts.
Hence, it is unlikely that this feature would not be misused by abusers to slide into the DMs of users whose opinions differ to their own.
Public Defender in the US Eliza Orlins shared a tweet highlighting how this feature would take away the one extra step of having to go to a user’s profile to DM them, making it easier for others to send abusive personal messages. Eliza also asked that if such a feature is to be introduced, then a safety feature should be provided to let users choose whether they want to enable such a feature of direct DMs on their tweets or not.
If at all this feature makes it out into the platform after testing, sending abusive DMs would essentially become just as easy as sending abusive replies to a user’s tweets. It is not yet clear whether any safety option would be provided to users so that they can choose whether this option is available on their tweets or not, but that hardly makes any difference.
There does not seem to be any clear benefit of this feature, as friends can connect on DMs simply by going to their old chats, or by just heading to the user’s profile.
A case on Twitter’s behalf can be made by saying that this would reduce abusers from heading to the profiles of a particular user, and therefore, help in limiting personal attacks. But, abusers are even known to head to profiles even if they just want to reply in tweets, so that would hardly make a difference.
At this stage, the feature does not seem to have any major upside that could justify the major con of abusers sliding into DMs more easily.
However, as track record shows, Twitter has not shied away in the past from recalling a feature that does not work well with the users, and so, if this feature does end up becoming a major issue, the most plausible action is that Twitter would intervene and roll it back.
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