Twitter shuns Quote Tweet feature, returns to normal retweets

The micro-blogging platform will no longer automatically show the quote tweet (QT) prompt when users try to retweet on its platform.

New Delhi: Twitter on Thursday announced to return back to the old way of retweets after realising that the new feature called Quote Tweet did not go well with the users.

The micro-blogging platform will no longer automatically show the quote tweet (QT) prompt when users try to retweet on its platform.

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“Our goal with prompting QTs (instead of Retweets) was to encourage more thoughtful amplification. We don’t believe that this happened, in practice,” the company said in a series of tweets.

“The use of Quote Tweets increased, but 45 per cent of them included single-word affirmations and 70 per cent had less than 25 characters,” Twitter informed.

The Quote Tweets were introduced in October ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, with an aim to encourage people to tweet and amplify information more thoughtfully and carefully.

However, Twitter saw a 20 per cent decrease in retweets.

“The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20 per cent decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we’ll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon,” the company said.

Twitter said it will continue to focus on encouraging more thoughtful amplification.

“We believe this requires multiple solutions — some of which may be more effective than others. For example, we know that prompting you to read articles leads to more informed sharing,” it added.