Linked: Twitter to ask some users to click link to article before retweeting
I can get behind this, sharing without reading is a huge problem, so why not nudge people to read it before they share it?
“Twitter Inc. will prompt some users to click links to other websites before retweeting them, part of an effort to discourage the spread of misinformation and foster more thoughtful communication on its social network.
“Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it,” the company said in a tweet Wednesday. ”
Right now, they’re only doing this in the Android app as a test. I also get that sometimes you’ve already read the article and retweet it without clicking on that link in Twitter, so I’m cool with letting people click through that and send the tweet anyway.
I don’t know that it’ll get anywhere, but whatever Twitter decides to do, read the article before you share it. The headline might just not truly reflect what you’re reading.
Case in point: I recently shared an article on my other site and the headline captured in sharing it was this:
Coronavirus, police violence boost risks of rising black youth suicide
Now, I shared the article because it was a really good, informative, look at the increase in suicide rates for black youth relative to other groups. It had some individual stories, some statistics to back up it’s claim, and what some groups have been trying to do about it since those statistics were released in 2019. There was a small mention that the rates have probably increased due to these recent events, but by and large, the increase has been going on for years. The headline doesn’t reflect that at all. It reflects an effort to use current events to get people to click and share and article that is only tangentially related to current events. If you saw it in a tweet and shared it thinking you were sharing an expose on current events, well, you’d be wrong.
But at least that was a good article worth sharing anyway, even if the headline misrepresents it. How many articles are you sharing that don’t fit that description?
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