Twitter now filters DMs from people you don’t know

Twitter today added a new feature to Direct Messages that will sort them into “Inbox” and “Requests.” The latter will contain DMs from people you do not currently follow, if you have opted to keep your DM open in the first place. You can preview the message and choose to hit accept or delete. Accepting the message will allow that user to continue message you in the future without getting sorted into the request tab. The sender will not know whether or not you’ve seen their message until you hit accept.

We gave this a quick spin and it looks like Twitter is still rolling the feature out — when I received a message from someone I didn’t follow, my Android app did not alert me with a push notification or a new message when I selected the Messages tab. On the web version of Twitter, however, there was a badge notification for the new message, but no Requests tab.

Whenever it fully rolls out, the feature is clearly yet another way Twitter is attempting to tackle potential abuse on its platform. But if you don’t pay attention, your Requests tab may soon look like the Other inbox on Facebook (now also called Message Requests), which, for me, is just a sea of messages in bottles that clearly never reached the shore.