Twitter announces new efforts to 'reduce the visibility of misleading information' before the election

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Twitter has announced new efforts to slow the spread of misinformation on its platform.

In a blog post on Friday, the company revealed changes it will make to "encourage more thoughtful consideration before tweets are amplified." For one, Twitter said that through at least the week of the election, it will be encouraging users to quote tweet posts rather than simply retweet them by bringing up the quote tweet composer when users hit the retweet button; retweets will still be possible if users don't write in the quote tweet composer, though.

Additionally, Twitter said that users who try to retweet posts that have received a label for containing misleading information will soon "see a prompt pointing them to credible information about the topic before they are able to amplify it," and there will also be "additional warnings and restrictions" applied to certain tweets with misleading information labels, including from political figures.

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"People must tap through a warning to see these tweets, and then will only be able to quote tweet; likes, retweets, and replies will be turned off, and these tweets won't be algorithmically recommended by Twitter," Twitter said. "We expect this will further reduce the visibility of misleading information, and will encourage people to reconsider if they want to amplify these tweets."

Twitter will also temporarily "prevent 'liked by' and 'followed by' recommendations from people you don't follow from showing up in your timeline" and alter the "For You" trending tab to only include trends with "additional context."

By taking these steps, The New York Times wrote that Twitter is "risking the ire of its best-known user," President Trump, as the "extra friction" on retweets in particular is "likely to have a direct impact on Mr. Trump's online activity." The Wall Street Journal also described these as "among the boldest" changes Twitter has made.