Twitter has today announced a new feature that would make sure you read an article before retweeting it. This is because sometimes a headline may mean a different interpretation from the full story. The micro-blogging platform is experimenting the feature though.
Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it.
To help promote informed discussion, we’re testing a new prompt on Android –– when you Retweet an article that you haven’t opened on Twitter, we may ask if you’d like to open it first.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 10, 2020
Due to the rising tensions within the Unites States, alongside the daily political discourse that’s been increasingly taking place over the last few years, Twitter believes that users on its platform might benefit from reading an article before they retweet it, to encourage a more productive discussion.
We wanted to test a way to improve the health of a conversation as it gets started. And to see if reminding people to read an article before they share it leads to more informed discussion.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 10, 2020
The feature is already started rolling out to some users on the Android app. As you retweet a post with an article embedded, a prompt will appear saying “Headlines don’t tell the full story. Want to read this before Retweeting?â€
Users can still retweet the article if they want to – so it’s a gentle reminder for users to read articles before others begin to spread misinformation. It isn’t clear what group of users have the feature in place, but our assumption is perhaps those with thousands of followers are the first to test it.