As much as we may be quick to bash social media sites for the spread of misinformation, we should appreciate the various efforts they have made to curb this across the board. Twitter though, is now planning to do much more in making sure that you are aware of what kind of news you are actually sharing.

The platform’s Android app is now testing a new feature that will remind users to actually read articles before they retweet them.

Twitter did explain this new feature on its Support page as an effort to “promote informed discussion.”

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Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it.

To help promote informed discussion, we're testing a new prompt on Android –– when you Retweet an article that you haven't opened on Twitter, we may ask if you'd like to open it first.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 10, 2020

Most articles that spread fake news are normally just concluded straight from the ‘clickbaity’ headlines without actually being read. This usually ends up in the spread of misinformation or partial truths that have proven to be hazardous in various countries around the world. For the feature to work, Twitter will start checking every article link you intend to retweet. So when you tap the button, Twitter will verify whether you have clicked the link yourself. If you have, you will then have the option to go ahead and retweet it.

However, this feature has not sat so well with some users who are labelling it as Twitter’s attempt to start spying on its users and their activity on the site.

For this experiment, if you tap to Retweet an article link, we’ll check if you've recently clicked the article link only on Twitter, not elsewhere.

When you see the prompt, you'll always have the option to go ahead and Retweet.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 10, 2020

Other than what Twitter has announced, not much is known about the feature and whether it will work for all kinds of links. No user has shared screenshots of how the feature works yet which would tend to leave us in the dark for now.

Nevertheless, this is definitely a good decision to attempt to curb the digital pandemic that is, misinformation.