Twitter will now tell you to ‘read before you retweet’

Twitter wants to encourage users to read articles before they click retweet button

Twitter is reportedly working on getting users to read articles before sharing them as retweets.Users will be prompted to 'read before retweeting' announced Twitter.

The social media giant has been working on the feature since June and will soon make it available to all users. The purpose behind this is to ensure users understand before sharing information.

“We shouldn't have to say this, but you should read an article before you Tweet it,” the company said.

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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

Headlines can be deceiving or don’t tell the whole story and can spread misinformation across the platform hence it is important to read the article before sharing it with their followers.

📰 More reading – people open articles 40% more often after seeing the prompt
📰 More informed Tweeting – people opening articles before RTing increased by 33%
📰 Some people didn’t end up RTing after opening the article – which is fine! Some Tweets are
best left in drafts 😏

— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020

What’s next:
🔜 Making the prompt smaller after you’ve seen it once, because we get that you get it
🔜Working on bringing these prompts to everyone globally soon 👀 pic.twitter.com/08WygQi06G

— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020

The social media giant also shared results from its initial test of the feature, which was limited to Twitter users on Android.

According to the result, 40 per cent people prompted with the message opened articles and that the overall proportion of people opening articles before retweeting increased by 33 per cent.  Some users also decided not to retweet the article after opening.

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The company is now “working on bringing these prompts to everyone globally". The future prompt message is expected to be smaller.