Twitter cleans up conversations, users still complain

If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation on Twitter, you will know just how clunky and difficult it can be.

If your friend’s handle is something like @15charactershah, you’ve only got 124 characters with which to craft a reply. That’s shorter than that sentence.

Reading them is even worse — when there are three handles and fifteen tweets for one sentence, it’s often easier to put the phone down and try to understand South African politics the old fashioned way — reading actual articles. But the service doesn’t want you to understand your government, and has now made it far simpler to converse on the platform.

For starters, when replying to someone or a group, their usernames won’t count towards the 140 character limit. Instead, their handles will be placed above the reply, allowing for a seamless reading experience.

“The updates we’re making today are based on feedback from all of you as well as research and experimentation,” Product Manager Sasank Reddy writes in an announcement. “In our tests of this new experience, we found that people engage more with conversations on Twitter.”

And in true apologetic form, the company took the time in the announcement to let us know that it’s not perfect but it’s trying.

“Our work isn’t finished — we’ll continue to think about how we can improve conversations and make Twitter easier to use,” the company promised.

Apparently for some, it wasn’t enough.

Twitter: *decides to change notifications, replies, and every damn thing*
Twitter, when asked about an edit button: pic.twitter.com/Cg7VPI7Ez4

— Angie Thomas (@acthomasbooks) March 30, 2017

twitter’s number one issue was aiding the election of a fascist manchurian candidate. number two, @ replies

— darcie wilder (@333333333433333) March 31, 2017

Hey @Twitter your new at replies structure is impossible for me as a low vision person to read. Grey tinyfont is for losers.

— Elsa SjunnesonHenry♿ (@snarkbat) March 30, 2017

ok so now that they removed the @ name in replies this is what we all look like pic.twitter.com/AqWwktIBsr

— MARIO (@MarioPalush) March 31, 2017

New twitter replies… are confusing or is it just me. I feel like im replying to myself….

— Yasmin (@princessmeenie) March 31, 2017

But some were grateful for the change.

Anybody ELSE notice that replying to a tweet, we’re not losing those characters? I LIKE this, I think. Full 140 on replies! Thanks @Twitter!

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) March 31, 2017

Did Twitter just update replies so that @’s no longer consume character counts? 😊✌️
@CorkieDcat@MUI_jovi_anon@MarebarPatriot@AJU_GAZA99pic.twitter.com/5r9SFP5U3m

— America1st (@iFightOn) March 30, 2017