Mentions on Twitter are something of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s an easy way to include a friend in a conversation or share content with someone else. On the other hand, if someone mentions your Twitter username even once in a conversation, you might receive notifications for responses that have nothing to do with you for hours or days. In order to solve this problem, Twitter is introducing a new “unmention” feature.
Twitter rolls out unmention feature to everyone
As Twitter’s safety team explained in a tweet, the unmention feature gives you the ability to leave a conversation. To use the feature, open the Twitter app and head to Mentions. Tap on the three dots on a tweet in which your username is mentioned. Now tap on the button that reads “Leave this conversation,” which will pull up a new page. The new page explains what happens when you decide to leave a conversation on Twitter:
- Untag your username: Your username stays, but it’ll be untagged from the original Tweet and all replies.
- Stop future mentions: People can’t mention you again in this conversation.
- Stop notifications: You won’t receive further notifications, but can still see the conversation.
You will have one last chance to back out, or you can just confirm that you want Twitter to unmention you. As noted above, your username will still appear in the tweet, but it will no longer link to your account. The bombardment of notifications will end.
This is just one way that Twitter is trying to give users more ways to protect themselves from harassment. Last month, Twitter revealed that it had started testing a feature that prompted users to reconsider Tweet replies with harmful language. Twitter says that users in the US who saw the prompt changed or deleted their replies over 30% of the time.
Of course, if these measures aren’t cutting it, you can always delete your account.
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