According to Bloomberg, Twitter’s own internal studies have shown that many users don’t fully understand its privacy features, so they post less often. Twitter’s privacy team wants to make those users feel more confident in speaking up. As of now, the tweet archiving feature would be a way for you to decide if you want your tweet to stick around before you tweet it. If you’d rather it be temporary, you’d be able to pick from a small variety of time settings (30, 60, or 90 days). Once your tweet has been live for however long you set the timer for, it will automatically get archived and pulled from public view. Though as noted, this feature is still just in the conceptualizing phase so a lot can change before it moves to user trials or public release. Perhaps the most obvious use for a tweet archive feature is being able to prevent a bad take from years past popping up at a bad time. While the desire for preemptive damage control (or prevention in this instance) is understandable, it still relies on user forethought. The user would have to think, perhaps in the middle of a heated argument, if they’d want their words to remain visible after so many weeks. With no word yet on when it might start rolling out for public testing, all we can do is imagine how Twitter’s planned archiving feature might pan out.
