Twitter on Thursday announced to return back to the old way of retweets after realising that the new feature called Quote Tweet did not go well with the users. The micro-blogging platform will no longer automatically show the quote tweet (QT) prompt when users try to retweet on its platform.
"Our goal with prompting QTs (instead of Retweets) was to encourage more thoughtful amplification. We don't believe that this happened, in practice," the company said in a series of tweets. "The use of Quote Tweets increased, but 45 per cent of them included single-word affirmations and 70 per cent had less than 25 characters," Twitter informed.
The Quote Tweets were introduced in October ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, with an aim to encourage people to tweet and amplify information more thoughtfully and carefully. However, Twitter saw a 20% decrease in retweets.
"The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20 per cent decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we'll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon," the company said. Twitter said it will continue to focus on encouraging more thoughtful amplification.
"We believe this requires multiple solutions -- some of which may be more effective than others. For example, we know that prompting you to read articles leads to more informed sharing," it added.
Twitter has also announced it will be removing tweets making false or misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccinations from next week and label such fake claims from early next year. Starting next week, Twitter will prioritise the removal of the most harmful misleading information. Using a combination of technology and human review, Twitter said that it will begin enforcing this updated policy on December 21 and expanding its actions during the following weeks.
From early 2021, Twitter may label or place a warning on Tweets that advance unsubstantiated rumours, disputed claims, as well as incomplete or out-of-context information about vaccines.
According to Twitter, beginning next week, the expanded policy will include false claims that suggest immunizations and vaccines are used to intentionally cause harm to or control populations and statements about vaccines that invoke a deliberate conspiracy.
"False claims which have been widely debunked about the adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations or false claims that COVID-19 is not real or not serious, and therefore that vaccinations are unnecessary" will also be counted as part of the expanded policy. Tweets that are labeled under the expanded guidance may link to authoritative public health information or the Twitter Rules to provide people with additional context and authoritative information about COVID-19.
The Twitter action came after reports surfaced earlier this week that Facebook will now send notifications directly to users who like, share, or comment on such posts.