Twitter announced a handful of product changes intended to make it harder for users to spread misinformation on the service in the weeks leading up to the U.S presidential election.
Some of the changes are related to Twitter’s retweet feature, which lets users share another person’s post to their own followers, and is the fastest way for a tweet to go viral. If someone tries to retweet a post that has been labeled as false, Twitter will show them “a prompt pointing them to credible information about the topic,” the company said Friday. It will also put more misleading tweets behind a warning screen, forcing users to click in order to see the original post.
Twitter will also prompt users to “quote tweet” a post before retweeting it—asking them to “add their own commentary” to the message instead of just passing it along.
“Though this adds some extra friction and an extra step 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,” the company wrote in a blog post.