Twitter’s recent change to replies makes following work completely in reverse.
Previously, replies not directed to you that someone you follow writes were handled in one of three ways. You could configure which way you preferred they be handled in your timeline in your account settings:
- Always show all of them to you.
- Only show them to you if you also followed the person the reply was directed to.
- Never show them to you.
Twitter’s change set everyone by default to option 2, and removed the ability of the user to configure a different option.
So now, following has a backwards effect. If I look at a Twitter’s page, it includes everything they tweet, including all their replies. I say to myself “This person writes interesting stuff. I want to follow them.” So I follow them. But in my timeline, I only get the non-replies of the person.
Following is a proactive choice. I want to read what this person says, so I follow. But now by following, I have actually downgraded the amount of information I am getting from this person. That’s completely the inverse of what following should mean.
I seriously hope Twitter restores the previous options. In fact, I would encourage them to make option 1 the default for everyone. Apparently option 2 had been the default for new accounts (I’ve forgotten now what it was when I first signed on). But it seems counter-intuitive to close off conversation by default.
Clearly there are cases where seeing everything would help. NASA often write replies that are of general interest to anyone. Yesterday I learned that Anton Yelchin is on Twitter (Chekov in the new Star Trek movie). He’s pretty active, but it’s a lot of replies. If you were to follow him, you’d think he was a lot more mute than he really is.
There are probably other examples. My point is just that Twitter should err on the side of having too much information available, and give people easy tools to tone it down. Don’t tone it down for everyone and remove the tools to ramp it back up again for those that want it.
