Twitter to prompt users to read viral story before retweeting it

Social media platforms are under constant fire for being a medium of spreading fake news or false information. In a bid to regulate the misinformation from spreading further, platforms like Twitter, Facebook etc. keep innovating and adding new controls and features. On Wednesday, Twitter announced that it is now testing a new feature that will prompt users to check if they want to read the article before retweeting it.

The idea behind this new feature is to make users aware of the message that the viral article wants to share. It is often seen that many users have the habit of retweeting content and articles shared by a celebrity or an influential person. Thus boosting the reach of the thought or content which they may not even endorse personally. Hence nudging the users before they share it further will only help in limiting the reach of a potentially dangerous opinion or article.

This new feature is still in a testing phase and is currently limited to Android users as of now. Twitter has not revealed any timeline of bringing this feature on other platforms.

This is just one of the many new features that Twitter is working on. Apart from working on various tweaks to make its interface look cleaner and easy, it has been working on a threaded conversation layout. Recently, it started testing a feature where users can restrict replies on their tweets and even hide specific replies.

Just yesterday, Twitter introduced Fleets in India. Though it’s more of a conversation starter rather than a security or privacy feature.