Twitter is adding an extra step to retweets, which will apply globally till the end of the election week in the United States. Post the elections, Twitter said it will assess whether those changes need to be continued.
The change takes a user who wants to retweet directly to the quote tweet page, as opposed to earlier when a user was asked if they want to retweet, quote tweet, or react with Fleet.
In a blog post, Twitter said that this would be to “encourage” people to add their commentary to amplify a particular tweet instead of just retweeting,
“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,” Twitter said.
If a user just wants to retweet, they can hit the retweet button leaving the quote tweet blank and it will appear as a retweet.
“We will begin testing this change on Twitter.com for some people beginning today [October 20],” Twitter said.
In another change, Twitter said that it will prevent “liked by” and “followed by” recommendations showing up on your timeline from people users don’t follow, and also won’t send notifications for these tweets.
”These recommendations can be a helpful way for people to see relevant conversations from outside of their network, but we are removing them because we don’t believe the “Like” button provides sufficient, thoughtful consideration prior to amplifying Tweets to people who don’t follow the author of the Tweet, or the relevant topic that the Tweet is about. This will likely slow down how quickly Tweets from accounts and topics you don’t follow can reach you, which we believe is a worthwhile sacrifice to encourage more thoughtful and explicit amplification,” Twitter said.