Twitter is adding an extra step to the retweet process in order to create a little “friction.” The goal, the company says, is to slow down the spread of disinformation in the final days leading up to the presidential election.
The changes will remain in place until at least the end of election week.
Under the new process, when you click or tap the retweet button, Twitter will pull up the “Quote Tweet” editor. This will encourage, the company hopes, user to add some context to the information being retweeted.
Twitter is hoping that with the added step people will better consider what they are retweeting or take the opportunity to add some perspective to the information being shared.
Adding text to a tweet is not a condition of retweeting and a user can leave the text field black. Leaving the field blank and hitting the retweet button again will allow the information to be shared as it normally would.