Twitter says it’s ‘experimenting with Unmentioning’

Twitter announced on Thursday that it is “experimenting” with a new feature that would allow users to remove themselves from conversations in which they were tagged by others.

“How do you say ‘Don’t @ me,’ without saying ‘Don’t @ me’? We’re experimenting with Unmentioning—a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations—available on Web for some of you now,” Twitter Safety tweeted.

Twitter Safety provided a GIF illustrating how the feature would function, with a user tagged in a conversation clicking on an option to “leave this conversation.”

The option allows social media users to “untag” their usernames, bar people from tagging them again and stop further notifications, all within that conversation.

It was not immediately clear from Twitter’s post when the feature would become more widely available.

The announcement follows another made by the social media platform earlier this week. The company said it would be testing an edit feature over the next couple months, specifically on its paid platform, Twitter Blue.

Twitter’s head of consumer product, Jay Sullivan, said the edit feature was the most-requested feature for the social platform. He said the tech company wanted to find a way to make sure the tool was made responsibly and would allow the “​​integrity of that public conversation” to be protected.

“Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation. Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work,” Sullivan tweeted.

“Therefore, it will take time and we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching Edit. We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go.”