Twitter Is Testing a Way to Silence Reply Guys. It Might Work Too Well.

This could make the platform less toxic — and less magical

Will Oremus
OneZero
Published in
6 min readMay 21, 2020

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In this photo illustration, the logo for the Twitter social media network is projected onto a man’s face.
Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images

The Twitter “reply guy” — a user, usually male, who responds to others, mostly female, in an overly familiar or condescending way — has become a stock character on the platform. For some people, particularly women with sizable followings, every…

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