Twitter adds a “quality filter” and new notification controls

When it comes to Android apps you can never have too much customization. As much as we appreciate companies like Twitter doing their best to apply AI and machine learning to show us the content they (or the robots) think is most relevant, nothing quite beats a good old on/off switch. So it is with the reasoning behind two new Twitter features: a quality filter and a new notification control that lets you filter out anyone you don’t follow.

Quality filter

First up, the intriguingly named Twitter quality filter. Once enabled, the filter attempts to “improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior. Turning it on filters lower-quality content, like duplicate Tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience.”

While obfuscating duplicate tweets or robo-tweets sounds good in theory, it has more than a few folks worrying about their visibility in the Twittersphere. Twitter hasn’t specifically explained what constitutes “lower-quality content” yet, so you’re only real option is to turn it on and see what happens. Fortunately, the option can be disabled in Twitter’s settings.

‘Only people I follow’

Onto the notification controls, which are dead simple. Simply hit the settings to either turn on or disable the option. Called ‘Only people you follow’ it’s pretty self-explanatory. By enabling the option you’ll only see tweets in your feed from the accounts you actually follow and not other tweets Twitter thinks might interest you. You will also be able to access your notification settings directly from the notifications tab.

The new features are rolling out to everyone in the coming days. Twitter notes on their blog post that the quality filter is still in its early days and will learn over time.

What other customization features would you like to see in Twitter?