The problem of users sharing links without reading them is not new. A 2016 study from computer scientists at Columbia University and Microsoft found that 59% of links posted on Twitter are never clicked.
Less academically sound, but more telling, was another article posted that same year with the headline “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting” – the fake news website the Science Post has racked up a healthy 127,000 shares for the article which is almost entirely lorem ipsum filler text.
Twitter’s solution is not to ban such retweets, but to inject “friction” into the process, in order to try to nudge some users into rethinking their actions on the social network. It is an approach the company has been taking more frequently recently, in an attempt to improve “platform health” without facing accusations of censorship.
Alex Hern
I must admit I am guilty of frequently doing this myself, but I at least try to retweet links only from sources I deem trustworthy.
Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 10, 2020
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.
I am skeptical this minor change would improve the spread of disinformation though. I have seen the prompt firsthand over the weekend in the Android app – I assume Twitter expanded the test beyond the US, but for now it has not appeared on the Twitter website. It is simply a third option alongside ‘Retweet’ and ‘Retweet with comment’, so there isn’t substantially more friction than before. I assumed the prompt would pop up after tapping ‘Retweet’, but I guess that would be too annoying for users. Tweaking the algorithm to reduce dissemination by potential bots (recently created accounts and those with very few followers) would be far more effective than adding friction for real people. I am more optimistic about the recently introduced labeling for government and state-affiliated media accounts: while it does not reduce their reach, it may make some people think twice before taking state-sponsored propaganda at face value.
Update: After a few more encounters with this new feature, it seems that it only activates when you want to retweet links from accounts you do not follow – which makes sense.
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