Twitter Reverts to Old Retweet Function After the Election

Twitter reversed one of the changes made to the social media platform during the 2020 presidential election in an effort to slow the spread of false information. Users can now go back to retweeting another user’s tweets quickly, without asking for additional commentary from the retweeting user. Although the user of Quote Tweets rose after the implementation was put into effect, Twitter said most users wrote just one-word affirmations or had less than 25 characters.

Back on Oct. 9, Twitter added the change, which meant that once someone hit the retweet button, they would be asked to add their own comment, possibly to point out an incorrect statement. Now though, it will go back to the way it was before. When a user clicks the retweet button now, you can either just share the message as is or add commentary if you wish.

“Our goal with prompting QTs (instead of Retweets) was to encourage more thoughtful amplification,” Twitter said in a statement on Wednesday. “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.” Twitter said there was an overall 20% decrease in sharing both regular Retweets and Quote Tweets.

In late October, Twitter also added a prompt asking people if they wish to read an article before they share it. Twitter will keep this in place. “We’ll continue to focus on encouraging more thoughtful amplification,” the company said. “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.”

Twitter is not the only social media network rolling back some of its changes made during the election. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported Facebook dialed back a change in its news feed algorithm that boosted major news outlets instead of hyperpartisan sites. CNN, NPR, the Times, and other major outlets saw a boost in traffic, while sites like Brietbart and Occupy Democrats saw a decrease during the pandemic. Some Facebook employees reportedly asked if the changes could be made permanent, but a Facebook spokesman told the Times they were always planned to be temporary.

“This was a temporary change we made to help limit the spread of inaccurate claims about the election,” Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said. “We’re still ensuring that people see authoritative and informative news on Facebook, especially during major news cycles and around important global topics like elections, Covid-19, and climate change.”