Twitter is briefly adjusting how you retweet ahead of the U.S. Presidential election on 3 November to help deter bullying and spread misinformation. Don't worry, you're still going to be able to retweet. But before at least the end of the election week, it won't be as easy as normal to retweet all of your fans.
Starting today, when you press or tap the retweet button, Twitter will pull the Zit Tweet composer up to allow you to write something about the tweet until you post it. You don't have to write something if you don't want to — just leave the composer blank and press the retweet button to retweet like you usually would. But Twitter hopes that by adding some tension into the process , people might better understand exactly what they're retweeting or take the opportunity to add their own perspective.
Here's what the latest retweet workflow looks like:
Changes to retweets are not the only variations that you can see from your Twitter experience today. Twitter will also not show "liked by" or "followed by" reviews from users you don't follow, and the trend box will only show trends with an extra background included. Like retweet updates, these tweaks will be in effect in the US from today until at least the end of the election week, according to Twitter. All these updates were revealed for the first time on October 9th.
