Twitter tests asking if you actually want to read an article before retweeting it

Admit it. 

You’ve shared articles based solely on their headlines. Lots of people do. Well, Twitter is now testing a new feature to try to stop that from happening.

The company is currently rolling out a new test feature asking users if they’d actually like to read an article linked in a tweet before they retweet it. 

“Headlines don’t tell the full story,” reads the prompt. “Want to read this before Retweeting?”

The prompt will pop-up if the user didn’t open the article on Twitter’s platform before clicking retweet. If they read the piece before or just want to share it anyway, there is nothing stopping them from actually hitting the retweet button. 

“It’s easy for links/articles to go viral on Twitter,” tweeted Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour. “This can be powerful but sometimes dangerous, especially if people haven’t read the content they’re spreading.”

The feature is only available on Android right now. Some users are already seeing the prompt, as BuzzFeed pointed out.

A Twitter spokesperson said there aren’t any “timelines to share on expansion” of the feature beyond Android quite yet.

Twitter has recently taken a number of steps to limit coronavirus-related misinformation and 5G-related hoaxes. Most recently, Twitter received a flurry of both praise and criticism for fact-checking misleading tweets from President Donald Trump.

The prompt won’t stop users from sharing articles that they didn’t read. Quite frankly, Twitter shouldn’t be doing that. But this new feature shows that the company is willing to test out different approaches to tackling its misinformation problem.