One of Twitter’s summer experiments — to get people to read news articles before retweeting them — will be rolled out to the rest of the platform “very soon.”

Twitter announced the experiment in June in an effort to “promote informed discussion”, as one of a few projects to improve user experience on the platform.

We shouldn't have to say this, but you should read an article before you Tweet it. https://t.co/Apr9vZb2iI

So, we’ve been prompting some people to do exactly that. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020

According to Twitter Communications, people opened articles 40 percent more often after they were they were prompted.

More reading – people open articles 40% more often after seeing the prompt
More informed Tweeting – people opening articles before RTing increased by 33%
Some people didn’t end up RTing after opening the article – which is fine! Some Tweets are
best left in drafts

— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 24, 2020

The next phase is to make the prompts smaller after a person sees it once (presumably so it doesn’t annoy or patronize users) and to make the feature available to all users worldwide.

TechCrunch’s Taylor Hatmaker writes that the feature is one of the small ways that Twitter is addressing the toxicity that the platform’s design created:

It seems like a small product change, but steps like this — and ideally much bigger ones — could be key to shifting the social media landscape to something less toxic and reactionary. Other test prompts on Twitter and Instagram warn users before they share content that could be harmful or offensive.

After building platforms tuned to get users sharing and engaging as much as possible, introducing friction to that experience seems counterintuitive. But inspiring even just a moment of pause in user behavior might address a number of deeply entrenched social media woes.

Ridding platforms of their problems won’t be easy, particularly for companies that are seldom motivated to make meaningful changes. But reprogramming user behavior away from impulsivity could help undermine the virality of misinformation, harassment, hyper-polarization and other systemic issues that we’re now seeing seep across the thin barrier between online and offline life.

I actually didn't read this article before I tweeted it. (Just kidding.) https://t.co/Doi2R1Ogh5

— Nic Garcia (@NicGarcia) September 25, 2020

Good to see Twitter rolling out this new feature. Apparently "users opened articles before sharing them 40% more often than they did without the nudge" https://t.co/Tdn2m6EFrt

— Róisín #wearamask (@roisire) September 25, 2020

Anyone with experience of newspaper reader measurement now re-re-asking themselves what the definition of read is https://t.co/r9tFoBijOm

— Neil Sharman (@Sharmani) September 25, 2020

Read before you retweet. Sad that @twitter even needs to push this prompt but I’m glad they’re doing it #socialmedia https://t.co/wVp24ZpFci

— Sophie Nadeau (@sophienadeau) September 25, 2020