Twitter tests feature to limit sharing on unread articles

Social media giant Twitter announced it was testing a new feature that will limit the sharing of articles by users who haven’t read them.

The feature appears to be aimed at slowing the spread of unverified information. It will ask the users whether they have read an article before they retweet it.

“Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you tweet it,” Twitter’s support team said.

Twitter said it would be testing the feature on its Android application ‘to help promote informed discussion.’

“When you retweet an article that you haven’t opened on Twitter, we may ask if you’d like to open it first,” the company said.

In a reply to one user, Twitter noted, “We wanted to test a way to improve the health of a conversation as it gets started.”

But it said users will “always have the option” to go ahead with the retweet.

Twitter and other platforms are struggling to contain misinformation, which often is passed along by users who fail to review details of the comments they are sharing.

Last month, Twitter decided to limit the reach of some comments by US President Donald Trump because of a violation of platform rules promoting violence.

Also, Twitter, after a long testing period, rolled out a new feature that will allow tweets to disappear after 24 hours.

The new feature from Twitter, called “fleets” is similar to vanishing posts on Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp Stories. India, only the third country in the world (after Brazil and Italy) to implement it, Twitter Fleets sure got netizens talking.

The new feature follows the same old drill as on other social media platforms. Circles appear in the head of your timeline. You can click on “+” to add Fleets to your Twitter account. You also have access to stories of accounts you are following, in the adjacent circles to yours.

Basically, this new feature has nothing new. The feature which has began rolling out to Android and iOS smartphone users in India does nothing new except eliminating the race of “retweets” and “likes”.