Twitter Goes Back to Old Retweet Function After U.S Elections

Widely used social network Twitter Inc. (TWTR) announced that it will be reverting to old retweet function now that United States Presidential elections have been wrapped up. Twitter had made some changes on its platform to curtail spread of misinformation during the electioneering period.

Back in October, the company made it impossible for Twitter users to retweet a tweet with misinformation and promoted the use of quote tweets which entailed commentary from the user.

Additionally, Twitter had also introduced curbs including removing and labeling of tweets prompting individuals to interfere with the just concluded Presidential elections process or implementation of the results.

Retweet functionality will be returning to the way it was before,” said Twitter further adding that users will no longer be prompted to quote tweets from the retweet function.

Twitter was hopeful that quote tweet instead of retweets would encourage thoughtful amplification however this was not the case when it came to real scenarios.

The use of quote tweets increased, but 45% of them included single-word affirmations and 70% had less than 25 characters. The increase in quote tweets was also offset by an overall 20% decrease in sharing through both retweets and quote tweets,” said Twitter.

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