By now, you probably have noticed that you cannot retweet a post directly.
This is after Twitter introduced a small change in the manner users send retweets, but not for long.
According to the social media platform, the changes have been introduced ahead of U.S.’s November 3 presidential elections.
Reason? Twitter says it wants to stop or manage abuse of the RT button that has in the past been linked to the spread of misinformation or fake news.
Still, you can send retweets, but it is not in the usual one-click manner we have become accustomed to.
So, when you click the retweet button, the action calls the ‘quote tweet’ option, which is basically a retweet but with a comment.
This, Twitter says, will encourage users to write something about the Tweet before broadcasting it to followers.
However, you are not tasked to write anything on the Quote Tweet page: you can send it as a blank, and this will send the RT as you ordinarily would.
In the long run, the changes, Twitter hopes, will encourage people to say something about a tweet in the hope of generating new perspectives.
These are not the only changes you will see with this new development. Users, for instance, will not show the ‘liked by’ option, the ‘followed by’ recommendation for people you do not follow, and trending topics will only show if they have a context attached to it.
A couple of weeks ago, Twitter had also introduced a feature encouraging users to read a news item shared before retweeting it.
