How to Set Who Can Reply to Your Tweet on Twitter

Twitter might not be as big as Facebook, but it is still one of the main social media platforms. Twitter is the place where all current affairs, news and controversies are discussed and hotly debated. Meanwhile, trolls may respond to your tweets with mean, sarcastic, and controversial comments that are abusive and disturbing. That’s why it’s important to control and define who can reply to your tweets on Twitter. This 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 prefer to leave it without any comments or discussions following it. Well, you can do it now. No more checking and responding to comments when you don’t want to.

Let’s see how it works on web, Android and iOS platforms.

1. Define who can reply to tweets on the Twitter web

Step 1: Open Twitter in your favorite browser and click the What’s New on Twitter box to create a new tweet.

2nd step: Compose the tweet as you normally would. You should now notice a new globe icon that says “Anyone can respond”. This is the default status and there is no way to change it to something else.

Click it once to display more options. You can select:

• Everyone: Anyone and everyone who follows you, or not, can comment. This is how it always has been.
• The people you follow: Only people you follow on Twitter can comment.
  
• Only the people you mention: Use the @username to tag the tweet, and only those you’ve tagged can reply to the tweet.

Step 3: Select an option, then publish the tweet as you normally would.

Keep on going. Try to reply to the tweet and witness what happens.

You can also check the tweet’s settings after posting it. Just open the tweet and you will notice the option selected below.

It should be noted that there is no way to change the settings after you publish the tweet. There is no edit button on Twitter yet. By clicking on the arrow button, you’ll see a menu where you can delete the tweet, among other things, but that’s it.

Deleting a tweet is an option if you catch your mistake early with no response or comment. Once the tweet goes viral, that’s another story.

Definition of limits

It’s good to see Twitter is finally making changes on the user side of things for a long time. They seem to have followed Facebook for this one. Facebook offers a similar feature where you can determine who you share your status update with. In the case of Twitter, things are a little different.

You only limit who can reply to the tweet, but not who can see it. Anyone can view the tweet, but only those you follow or mention can reply if you wish. You cannot tweet a personal update on Twitter and share it with selected people. Guess that’s the next step, but that’s not the reason Twitter was created. It’s more of a Facebook thing.