| Hey all, it's Kurt. Twitter Inc. on Wednesday announced a small, but potentially consequential update for Android smartphone users: When they go to retweet an article, but haven't actually clicked on the link to that story, Twitter will ask them to pause. "We may ask if you'd like to open it first," the company explained. It's a radical idea in today's digital, share-everything world. If people actually took time to read beyond a clickbait headline, it might limit the spread of misinformation and improve discourse online. For the past few years, social media companies have been on a mission to change the way their users behave—an exceptional challenge in a rapidly polarizing world where even elected leaders are violating social media rules. Some of this is accomplished with policies or guidelines that give companies cover to punish rule breakers. But more and more frequently they're trying to fix problems in the way they created them: With product features. If companies can create negative, unintended consequences with their features, these same businesses can create products that lead to positive outcomes, the thinking goes. That's where Twitter's prompts come in, and where Facebook Inc. has tried to do the same by labeling misinformation. Instagram also asks people to reconsider before they post something mean in the comments, and has started hiding like counts to alleviate social pressure. "If you dunk on somebody and you get a lot of engagement, a lot of 'Likes,' a lot of retweets, that is encouraging you to be mean, basically," David Gasca, a former Twitter executive who worked these initiatives, said last year. "You could imagine changing [the product] such that you provide positive incentives for encouraging more constructive conversation." It's an ambitious dream, in part because Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies have dug themselves into such a deep hole. Algorithms that promote sensational articles have led to the proliferation of so-called fake news. Share and retweet buttons have made virality easier than ever, often at the cost of context or accuracy. Last week, a man got doxed on Twitter when posts falsely accusing him of assault spread in the way that only a viral tweet can. Years after Twitter launched a retweet button, the man who helped build it said he almost immediately discovered the feature's dangerous potential. "We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon," he told BuzzFeed. Whether or not these companies can repair the damage is yet to be seen, though some early examples are encouraging. When Facebook labels something as false, it says 95% of the time people don't click on it. The company's WhatsApp service has made it harder for people to forward messages to big groups. That cut message forwarding by 25%. Twitter has a long way to go to improve discourse on its service, and it's possible these prompts do nothing. But social media companies have almost always pushed users to share more, and the issues have piled up. Encouragement to share less? What do we have to lose? —Kurt Wagner | 
Post a Comment