Microblogging website Twitter on Wednesday rolled out new updates to "encourage more thoughtful amplification of tweets" ahead of the US Presidential Elections 2020 which are scheduled to take place on November 3. "This is part of our approach to limit the spread of misleading information during #Election2020," said Twitter.
Hence, starting today, whenever you click on the retweet option, Twitter will first prompt you to use Quote Tweet instead of a retweet. But, if you don't wish to write anything and simply share the tweet, then you can do so by just leaving the Quote Tweet blank.
"First, we will encourage people to add their own commentary prior to amplifying content by prompting them to Quote Tweet instead of Retweet. People who go to Retweet will be brought to the Quote Tweet composer where they’ll be encouraged to comment before sending their Tweet. Though this adds some extra friction for those who simply want to Retweet, we hope it will encourage everyone to not only consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation. If people don’t add anything on the Quote Tweet composer, it will still appear as a Retweet. We will begin testing this change on Twitter.com for some people beginning today," Twitter said in a blog.
After the update, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to the microblogging website and wrote, "You can retweet retweet too, just leave blank and hit the [re]tweet button."
In addition to this update, Twitter will also prevent “liked by” and “followed by” recommendations from people you don’t follow from showing up in your timeline and won’t send notifications for these tweets.
"Twitter has a critical role to play in protecting the integrity of the election conversation, and we encourage candidates, campaigns, news outlets and voters to use Twitter respectfully and to recognize our collective responsibility to the electorate to guarantee a safe, fair and legitimate democratic process this November," Twitter added in the blog.
