Twitter is bringing a feature to everyone soon, which will prompt users to read an article before retweeting it. The company has trailed with this earlier in June this year and now announced the results to be seemingly positive. Thus, it’s now gearing up to roll this prompt feature to everyone. The initial tests showed 33% of people opening it before sharing, and some haven’t after reading!
Twitter Makes You Read an Article Before Sharing
Social media platforms are often vested with a common problem of hoax spreading. While they deploy teams and AI to check some reported posts, it’s not always the case. The junk shared by people through their accounts spread like a wildfire and harms others perceptions. And to break this down, Twitter is now pushing users to understand the concept.
We shouldn't have to say this, but you should read an article before you Tweet it. https://t.co/Apr9vZb2iI
So, we’ve been prompting some people to do exactly that. Here’s what we’ve learned so far. ⤵️
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020
As tested in June with a small group of people, Twitter prompts a notification as
“Headlines don’t tell the full story / You can read the article on Twitter before retweeting” before retweeting an article without reading. While Twitter didn’t specially mention this feature is to contain hoax sharing, it is, seemingly.
Twitter Communications announced the results of this trail as;
- There’s a 33% increase in people opening the articles before retweeting
- There are 40% more people opening the article after being promoted by Twitter, and
- Some have decided not to retweet after opening the article!
This isn’t the only reform Twitter brought to its platform. The microblogging site has earlier introduced options to limit replies for tweets, to limit the spam. Also, it assigned badges to state-linked news and political accounts, so users can determine how credible the news is. It even added fact-checking labels to tweets that would avoid misleading people.
