Less than a month before this year’s election, Twitter announced changes they said were designed to “bring more context and encourage thoughtful consideration before Tweeting.”
Those changes have been rolled back. Here’s Twitter’s explanation:
After learning from this product experience, we’re sharing an update: today Retweet functionality will be returning to the way it was before.
Here's what we saw while we prompted Quote Tweets (1/4): https://t.co/MzoDKy3d69
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 16, 2020
Our goal with prompting QTs (instead of Retweets) was to encourage more thoughtful amplification. We don’t believe that this happened, in practice. The use of Quote Tweets increased, but 45% of them included single-word affirmations and 70% had less than 25 characters. (2/4)
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 16, 2020
The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20% decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we'll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon. For more details: https://t.co/Were7yWdOz (3/4)
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 16, 2020
We'll 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. https://t.co/4NOK2cKBeF (4)
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 16, 2020
People have noticed that the timing of all this was… interesting:
Now that the election is over it’s ok for people to retweet what they want again? Go figure. https://t.co/pGJyeKLSLX
— The ?FOO (@PolitiBunny) December 17, 2020
Winner of most obvious election interference award -> https://t.co/WjWJpIYwP5
— Storm Paglia ?? (@storm_paglia) December 17, 2020
Magically happening just a few weeks after election day. https://t.co/zgLFs4wZz9
— Sister Toldjah, VP of BS Detection ? (@sistertoldjah) December 17, 2020
Total coincidence and completely unrelated to the election having turned out the way they no doubt hoped.
They think we're all dumb https://t.co/w4XwRATQsY
— Heimish Conservative (@HeimishCon) December 17, 2020
Weird how this occurred during an election and then when it was over you stopped.
— The Man (@DawgMan78) December 17, 2020
A: literally everyone could have predicted this, so why didn't you? B: when you rolled this out you promised it was temporary until the election so why do you even feel a need to explain rolling it back
— Random832 (@Random832) December 16, 2020
Was there nobody who told @jack this would happen? Does anyone at Twitter use Twitter? https://t.co/dQLEIl9qle
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) December 17, 2020
When will the next tweak take place?
OK. We’ll wait for the next “thoughtful amplification” experience update prior to the 2024 election. ? https://t.co/NZMFjg1rVh
— Thomas Jeans (@thomasjeans) December 17, 2020
Not that this had anything to do with the election!
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