Twitter Announces New Updates To DMs Including Filtering Messages From Users You Don’t Follow

Twitter is doing everything to make its direct messaging (DM) feature something you use and with the latest updates, it looks like they are working to make the service a standalone one. Twitter says it is adding “Requests” inbox for DMs and the feature as they say is expected to filter unwanted messages from your inbox while protecting you from abuse which is something Twitter seems to be really interested in these days.

According to Twitter, “If your DMs are open and someone you don’t follow messages you, it will go into requests” and from there you can accept or delete the messages and if you accept, it goes into your inbox but as Twitter also puts it on their support page, deleting a message from Requests doesn’t guarantee that you get such messages in future. Like email filters, it just means those messages won’t clog your inbox any longer. You would have to block or mute that users to stop future messages from hitting your Requests.

Other updates to direct messaging on Twitter include ability to accept/delete prompts if you’re being added to group DMs by users you don’t know and until you click accept, they won’t even know that you have read the message.

Attached media to DMs from unknown users will henceforth be blocked but can be views if you click the “View Media” button.

The new updates roll out to iOS and Android users from today while web users can expect to start seeing this in the months ahead.

Twitter could be close to making its DM feature a standalone even though usage might still be low. But Twitter has linked he feature with tech support which is a way to increase usage towards an independent launch like what Facebook did with Messenger.