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Twitter says that prompting users to read articles before retweeting them is working. Now, more users will be asked to do so in the future.
In June, Twitter began testing a feature that asks users to reconsider retweeting links they haven’t clicked.
“The headlines don’t tell the whole story,” the message begins. “You can read the full article on Twitter before retweeting.”
As part of the test, users who went to retweet a link before clicking on it were shown the following pop-up window:
As a result of displaying this pop-up, users opened articles 40% more than they did without it.
Additionally, there was a 33% increase in users who clicked on an article before retweeting it.
That means that some users clicked on an article and eventually changed their mind about retweeting it.
📰 More reading: people open articles 40% more often after viewing the message
📰 More informed Tweeting: People opening articles before RTing increased by 33%
📰 Some people didn’t end up doing RT after opening the article, which is fine! Some tweets are
it is better to leave it in drafts 😏– Twitter Communications (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020
That is exactly what the indicator is designed for; encourage users to make more informed decisions about how to share content.
With this feature working as intended, Twitter says it plans to roll it out to everyone.
Whats Next:
🔜 Reduce the size of the message after having seen it once, because we understand that you get it
🔜 Working to bring these indications to everyone around the world soon 👀 pic.twitter.com/08WygQi06G– Twitter Communications (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020
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Since these prompts drive more clicks, it seems like they’re a good thing for publishers.
Or at least they can benefit publishers who publish high-quality content.
More clicks and more traffic are generally positive things, but neither is sustainable if users are being driven to low-quality content.
This feature has the potential to expose bad editors as much as it rewards good ones.
Content that contains spam, clickbait headlines, and harmful / incorrect information is less likely to go viral if users are asked to think twice before sharing.
Time will tell if this feature has a measurable impact on the amount of misinformation spread on Twitter.
It’s worth noting that at the time this feature was first tested, it only applied to news publishers.
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Since Twitter hasn’t said anything different, I can only assume that it only affects links to the media.
Hi Rachel, for this experiment, the directions apply to links to the media domains.
– Twitter support (@TwitterSupport) June 11, 2020
Related: Twitter will check if articles are read before sharing
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