In June, Twitter started an experiment to prompt people to read an article before tweeting it in an attempt to foster "informed discussion." The test, which was available to Android users only, has succeeded in getting more people to read before they tweet, the firm announced. It shared the results today:
📰 More reading – people open articles 40% more often after seeing the prompt
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020
📰 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 😏
According to the released statistics, upon seeing the prompt, people opened the article 40% more than the usual times, and in some cases, people opted the choice to not retweet the article after opening it.
This feature would help Twitter step up its fight against misinformation as we near the 2020 U.S. presidential election. There has also been a surge of fake news during the coronavirus pandemic, which the firm hopes to clamp down through its initiative. It believes that if people take the time to read an article, it could prevent false claims from spreading as widely as they might otherwise.
Twitter will soon roll out this feature to users globally in a bid to encourage "more informed tweeting." Additionally, when users retweet a link that they haven"t opened in the app, it will be accompanied by a prompt stating that "headlines don"t tell the full story."