Twitter now filters out direct messages from users you don’t follow

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Twitter's new Requests inbox.
Twitter's new Requests inbox.
Photo: Twitter

Twitter has followed Facebook’s lead by filtering out direct messages from users you aren’t already connected with.

Direct messages from accounts you don’t follow will now end up in their own inbox as message “requests.”

If you’ve ever received a message from someone on Facebook who you aren’t friends with, you’ll know it ends up in a separate folder, rather than your regular inbox. Now the same happens on Twitter, thanks to a new “Requests” folder.

“This is where you’ll see messages from people you don’t follow,” Twitter explains. To protect you from potential abuse, any media attachments will be hidden until you tap the “view media” option. Of course, you’ll only get random messages if you accept DMs from anyone.

Until this change, all direct messages — including those from accounts you don’t follow back — ended up in the same Messages inbox. If you have a popular account, it made it difficult to distinguish between potential spam and messages you actually care about.

That’s no longer the case. However, once you accept a message request from an unknown user, the conversation will move into your regular inbox. If you decline it by deleting the message, the sender won’t know you’ve chosen to ignore them.

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