Twitter is the most vocal sharing platform in India as of right now.
With the Farmer Protests going on, Twitter has been one of the most influential platforms to raise a voice.
Twitter has also been in the controversies for this, as the Indian Government, or as they call it “Godi Media” has been spreading fake news via the app. Many Farmer supporting accounts were also banned recently, on orders given by the government, which resulted in a lot of backlash for Twitter.
It was also in some reports back then that this social media platform was to be banned in India due to the same reason.
But, as of recently, things have cleared up and the bird has been rolling out updates. In its latest version, it offers Voice DM’s to the users.
Android Central reports that the audio messages are now available in three countries worldwide: India, Brazil, and Japan. Plans for voice DMs were first announced last year. Twitter says the feature, which it’s calling an “experiment,” will roll out in India in phases.
In a statement, Twitter India’s managing director, Manish Maheshwari, said voice messages are designed to “give people a new way to express themselves and help them connect through the nuances, emotion, and empathy built by hearing someone’s voice.” Similar features are already available on other services like Messenger, Instagram DMs, and WhatsApp.
A video released by Twitter India shows how the feature works. Users can start recording using a small icon to the right of the message box, and voice messages can be up to 140 seconds in length. There’s an option to review a voice message before sending it. Although it isn’t possible to send voice messages from the web at the moment, browsers can reportedly still playback the audio clips.
While Twitter has always been a text-based platform, it’s been testing a number of audio-based features over the last year, including audio tweets the company has been testing on iOS as well as Twitter Spaces, which are voice chat rooms similar to what Clubhouse offers. However, Twitter’s audio experiment faced criticism for their lack of accessibility options. In response, the company that they were setting up new accessibility teams within the company and that it would be adding automated captions to audio and video on the platform in 2021.
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