The social media giant made some changes and added more features on the platform for a limited time during the 2020 US elections. One change out of them was made in the retweet workflow to avoid the spread of false information. The users who retweeted on the platform saw a Quote Tweet composer till today, which allowed them to write a caption regarding the tweet they are sharing that reveals the user’s views about the post. According to the company, this change also helped the users in reviewing what they are actually tweeting.
The company has now finally returned the retweet workflow to normal on Wednesday, which means that the users will no longer see a Quote Tweet composer, and the post will be retweeted immediately. Twitter observed a 20 percent decrease in retweets, while the Quote Tweet prompt was available.
The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20% decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we'll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon. For more details: https://t.co/Were7yWdOz (3/4)
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 16, 2020
With the change, the use of Quote Tweet was, however, increased but, people didn’t express themselves well in the captions. 45 percent of the users used only one-word affirmation, whereas 70 percent of users had fewer than 25 characters in total. The company’s main goal was to make users more thoughtful while retweeting and expected better results. Even after changing the retweet workflow, Twitter could not accomplish what it wanted to with the Quote Tweet; hence decided to reverse the change.
