Twitter revamped its reply feature today: Usernames won't show up in replies to tweets anymore.
It used to be that a bunch of @ usernames would show up in your Twitter replies, which could occupy a significant chunk of the 140 character limit for tweets. Now the @ names won't appear in the replies themselves. The names of the people in the conversation will appear above the tweet, and you can control who's part of the conversation by tapping on that list of names.
And people are ~stressed~.
[inside twitter hq] ENGINEER: I’ve got an idea JACK: not fixing harassment AGAIN ENGINEER: No it makes replies real shitty JACK: do go on
Days before dropping to 35% approval rating: Obama: Never W Bush: 1,927 Clinton: Never Trump: 68 Twitter's new replies: <1
Us: We want to be able to save gifs and an edit button Twitter: Ok let's change how your replies look!
People pointed out that it's tough to remove yourself from replies with the new feature:
Twitter, I don't actually WANT all my replies to myself to show on my twitter like this...
I can't. Stupid Twitter. We need the ability to remove ourselves from self replies!
And they just generally...loathe the change.
Yeah I'm really not the biggest fan of these new twitter replies it makes the mobile app almost impossible to use
This twitter replies update is too ugly for me
Twitter has more carefully hidden my replies from view. Clever. Very, very clever. I see what's going on here. #marginalized
But some people love it, I guess?
Love the new twitter replies. 😍
THIS is great news! @Twitter removes @replies from 140-character limit https://t.co/9B8rmJCljw #smnews
The overwhelming majority of reactions have been negative, though.
Twitter rolled back a similar feature in December in response to widespread outrage.
The company has recently shipped a number of updates, many of which are intended to curb abuse. In June 2016, it announced that GIFs, videos, photos, and other media wouldn't count toward the 140-character limit.
It's worth noting that pretty much any time Twitter rolls out a change, people get mad. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.