In 2018, Disney fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn over tweets he wrote between 2008 and 2012. Although the company later rehired Gunn, it’s just one example of many people who have seen an old social media post come back to chase you.
In recent years, some Twitter users have turned to tools like TweetDelete.net to prevent something similar from happening to them. Soon, Twitter may also be in a position to offer its own solution to the problem.
The company, which shares part of its product roadmap with Bloomberg, said it plans to test a feature that would allow people to automatically archive their tweets after a certain period of time. The tool is currently in the concept stage, so it doesn’t have a release date yet, but that hasn’t stopped Twitter considering a number of timing options, including 30, 60 and 90 days.
The decision to give people the ability to archive their tweets is part of a broader trend of “social privacy,” which Twitter told Bloomberg to give people more control over their identity on the platform. To that end, the company plans to test a feature this month that will allow people to remove followers. By the end of the year, it will also be testing a tool that gives individuals the option to opt out of public conversations that people mention.
Twitter told Bloomberg that many of these tools come in response to creative solutions its users have found to make up for missing features. For example, people found out that you can remove someone as a follower by locking and unlocking them. Based on a concept it shared in July, the company also plans to have people review whether their accounts are public or private.
It will be interesting to see if Twitter decides to give only a few users the option to archive their tweets. After all, the platform acts as a kind of public record, giving people a way to hold politicians accountable for things they have said in the past.
Source: Engadget
