Clean Up the Twitter Garbage With New Notification Filters To avoid garbage tweets, you can now disable Twitter notifications from people who don't follow you and/or those with a new account.
This story originally appeared on PCMag
Twitter today added some new filtering options to help shield you from abuse.
You can now opt to disable notifications from people who don't follow you and/or those with a new account; Twitter didn't specify what qualfies as "new." To try out the new filtering options from the Twitter app via your notifications (the bell icon along the bottom). Then tap the gear icon in the upper-right corner and "advanced filters" and toggle on the notifications you want to mute.
The filters are optional, and won't affect notifications from people you follow.
These new options come after Twitter in March first started letting users mute notifications from people they don't follow, accounts without a profile photo, as well as users with unverified email addresses and phone numbers.
"Many people requested more filter options for their notifications, and we're excited to bring these to everyone on Twitter," Twitter VP of Engineering Ed Ho wrote in a blog post at the time.
Twitter also offers a filter that removes "lower-quality content" from your notifications, which could include duplicate tweets or content that appears to be automated. You can also turn this on or off in your notification settings.
Twitter also recently changed the way it displays direct messages you receive from random people. If you've opted to accept direct messages from anyone, messages from people you don't follow now appear as "Requests" in the messages tab. Direct messages from people you follow go to your main Twitter inbox, as usual, and the ones from people you don't know are filtered to the new Requests tab -- just like on Facebook Messenger.