Twitter may not be as big as Facebook, but it is still one of the important social media platforms. Twitter is the place where all current events, news and discussions are discussed and hotly debated. Meanwhile, trolls may respond to your tweets with mean, sarcastic and controversial comments that are abusive and offensive. That’s why it’s important to control and adjust who can reply to your tweets on Twitter. It was not possible until recently.
Twitter has finally updated its app, giving users more control over who can reply to their tweets.
Sometimes you want to share something and you prefer to leave it without any comments or discussions that follow. Well, you can do this now. You no longer have to check back and reply to comments when you don’t want to.
Let’s see how this works on the web, Android and iOS platforms.
1. Set Who Can Reply To Tweet On Twitter Web
Stage 1: Open Twitter in your favorite browser and click the What’s Happening on Twitter box to compose a new tweet.
Step 2: Compose the tweet as you normally would. You should now see a new globe icon that says ‘Anyone can reply’. This is the default state and there is no way to change it to something else.
Click once to reveal more options. You can choose:
- Everyone: Anyone following or not following you can comment. This has always been the case.
- people you follow: only people you follow on Twitter can comment.
- Just the people you mentioned: Use @username to tag the tweet and only people you tag can reply to the tweet.
Stage 3: Choose an option and then send the tweet as you normally would.
To continue. Try responding to the tweet and witness what happens.
You can also check the tweet settings after posting. Just open the tweet and you will see the selected option below it.
What is noteworthy is that there is no way to change the settings after posting the tweet. Twitter doesn’t have an edit button yet. Clicking the arrow button will bring up a menu where you can delete the tweet, among other things, but that’s it.
Deleting the tweet is an option if you catch your mistake early on when there are no replies or comments. When the tweet goes viral, it’s a different story.
2. Set Who Can Reply To Tweet On Twitter Android
The steps for the Twitter client for Android remain more or less the same.
Stage 1: Open the Twitter app on your smartphone and click the feather with the plus icon to compose a new tweet.
Step 2: Share whatever you want, you will find the new control button waiting for you at the bottom of the screen. Tap the ‘Anyone can reply’ button.
Stage 3: Choose one of the three available options as you would with the web client.
Step 4: Click the Tweet button to post.
You can view the selected option at the bottom of the screen before sending the tweet. This reduces the possibility of making mistakes.
3. Set Who Can Reply To Tweet On Twitter iOS
Stage 1: Open the Twitter app on your iPhone and tap the feather with the plus symbol to compose a new tweet.
Step 2: Type what you want to share, then tap the globe icon below to set a response preference.
Stage 3: Choose one of the three available options.
Step 4: Submit that update.
Like Twitter’s web client, there is no way to edit a tweet after publishing it on Android and iOS phones. That means you can’t change permissions either. You will have to delete the tweet and start over. In this case, copy the content before deleting it so you don’t have to retype everything and be sure to fix any other errors or add anything extra you want.
Setting Boundaries
It’s good to see Twitter finally making changes on the user side of things after a long time. They seem to have taken a cue from Facebook for this. Facebook offers a similar feature where you can specify who you share your status update with. In Twitter’s case, things are a little different.
You only restrict who can reply to the tweet, but you restrict who can view it. Anyone can see the tweet, but only people you follow or mention can reply if you want. You cannot tweet and share a personal update with selected people on Twitter. I guess that’s the next step, but that’s why Twitter wasn’t set up. This is more of a Facebook thing.
Next: Too many emails from Twitter in your inbox? Learn how you can reduce inbox clutter in your email client by stopping Twitter from sending emails.
