Twitter Puts a Muzzle on Your Friends: Goodbye People I Never Knew (Updated) - ReadWriteWeb
My comment on this article:
Honest answer: 99% of twitter users don’t care about this setting.
I personally think it would be better to still leave the option, but give it a default of “only get replies of people you follow”. This way, the average user won’t bother changing the setting and most advanced users will understand what this is about.
Twitter is mainstream, they’ll try to please the majority and make the platform as easy as possible to facilitate adoption.
