The Twitter unmention feature has been rolled out. In spite of the inherent character limits, it remains very easy for you to get roped right into Twitter threads that you never had any intention of being a part of. Whether as a reply to someone or just as a random action, getter “@mentioned” can get you down a slippery slope that can end you up in harassment.
Twitter Unmention Feature Rolled Out
Twitter currently does not have any of the functionality to fix this issue, even as its stands against harassment. Fortunately, a privacy designer that is in the social network, would be coming up with several concepts that would get you implemented to allow users unmention themselves from a conversation.
Although this mostly occurs during replies, anyone can just easily mention your Twitter handle, and any replies to that would get you included unless the author opts to actually take out your handle. At the moment, there is no way that users can take control of their own handle and remove themselves from what might be a toxic thread. That’s in contrast to Facebook, which has allowed its users to untag themselves from certain photos or posts.
How Twitter Unmention Feature Works
Twitter privacy designer Dominic Camozzi happens to be conceptualizing simple ways for them to save themselves from such situations. A simple option in a tweet that could just immediately unmention yourself and remove the unwanted attention that it might attract.
The concept, however, would head beyond just retroactive removal. The idea basically is to also get users the choice of who can @mention them, especially if it is someone that they don’t follow, to begin with. Unfortunately, that still relies on the user first getting tons of mentions, in which case that they are notified of the sudden activity.
Twitter Unmention Offers More Control
These features would actually get users more control over who gets to pull them right into a conversation, something that Twitter would only make very easy to carry out. Unfortunately, these are still concepts, and it is not yet clear if this would be the direction that the social network would take right into the future coming.
