Twitter may allow users to hide their old tweets

Twitter is planning new features to give people more privacy options, according to Bloomberg. The social network's plans reportedly include the option to archive old tweets so that they are not visible to other users after a specified period of time (such as 30, 60, or 90 days or a full year). They also include possible options to limit who can see which tweets they have liked, allow people to remove themselves from a Twitter conversation, and allow people to remove followers without completely blocking them.

Bloomberg describes the new features as a set of "social privacy" changes that aim to make people more comfortable interacting on Twitter. Internal investigation on Twitter apparently found that many users don't even understand whether their accounts are set to public or private, something the company will start asking users to check in September.

There is no timeline for some of the changes, and the archive option, in particular, is in the "concept phase," according to Bloomberg. But Twitter reportedly plans to start allowing people to leave conversations by the end of the year and allow people to remove followers (rather than gently block them) starting this month.

Twitter confirmed the news in a statement to The Verge. "At Twitter, privacy is more than what we do with your data, it's also about how we help you feel safe and in control of how you show up on Twitter," a spokesperson said. "We understand that there's no one size fits all approach to privacy, so we're excited to roll out more features and tools to empower people on Twitter to customize their experience. Our focus on social privacy is inspired by feedback we received through a global research study we conducted to better understand people's perceptions of and needs for privacy around the globe. We'll begin testing some of these features as soon as next week."

The upcoming changes accompany a number of other recent Twitter updates. Over the past year, the company tested monetization features like ticketed audio rooms, which began rolling out last week, and subscription-based "Super Follows," which launched yesterday in the US.

As Bloomberg acknowledges, the privacy changes reproduce sometimes clunky solutions that many users have already adopted, including third-party services that delete tweets after a certain period of time. That's in contrast to fleets of Twitter, an expiring messaging tool that Twitter retired after eight months of little use.