Earlier this year, Twitter launched an experiment of sorts where on smartphones, whenever a user wanted to retweet a link to an article, they were prompted to open the link and read the article first. This wasn’t mandatory, but the idea behind it is that Twitter wanted users to maybe get a better idea of the article before deciding if they should retweet it.
According to Twitter, it appears that this experiment was a success. The company claims that based on what they found during the experiment, 40% more people actually clicked through to the article and read it after being prompted. They also saw that the number of people who clicked an article before retweeting increased by 33%, and some people did not end up retweeting after reading the article, which the company claims is fine since some tweets are “best left in drafts”.
https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1309178716988354561
For those wondering why this is a big deal, it is because sometimes some publications write clickbait titles designed to provoke some kind of response. This can result in people sharing an article with the wrong intention based purely on the title itself, even though the actual content might tell a slightly different story.
This can lead to the spread of misinformation or misconceptions and is simply unnecessary. Based on the success of this experiment, Twitter says that they are now working to bring the feature to more users in the future.
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