What you need to know
- Twitter will now encourage users to read articles before they retweet them.
- Sometimes the headline of an article may not fully capture the spirit of the body, but an outraged retweet may spark inaccurate discourse on the platform.
- The prompt will show up if users attempt to retweet an article they haven't opened.
Twitter is making a small change to foster healthy conversations on its platform. It will now be testing a feature on its Android app that encourages users to pause, take a moment, and read any article they are about to retweet before they share it.
Often, readers may find that what a title says may not accurately reflect the contents of the article, or the article may present a more nuanced position than the title and tweet, but that doesn't stop a retweet from getting halfway around the world in the meantime.
Twitter's support account announced the test on Wednesday:
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 isn't saying when this new warning is rolling out, but if you do see it on your phone, you now know what's going on. Besides, "you may want to read it before you tweet it" is good advice, whether it's for your own tweet, or content that you're retweeting.
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