Thread

As we head into #Election2020 , this morning we announced some important updates to our policy and to the product experience which you can read about in detail here: https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2020/2020-election-changes.html

Under our updated civic integrity policy, Tweets which claim an election win prematurely (without certification by applicable authorities) will be labeled & direct people to our US election page.

Tweets that incite interference with the election process, such as through violent action, will be subject to removal. This covers all Congressional races and the Presidential Election.

We will also add additional restrictions to Tweets with misleading information labels from U.S. political figures, U.S.-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers, as well as Tweets which obtain a significant number of engagements:

On these Tweets, people will need to tap through a warning to see the Tweet, and then will only be able to Quote Tweet it. Likes, Retweets, and replies will be turned off.

On the product side, we’re making a few changes (starting Oct 20 through at least the end of Election Week in the US) with the goal of adding more context and encouraging more thoughtful consideration before Tweets are amplified:

1) When people attempt to Retweet a Tweet with a misleading information label, they will see a prompt pointing them to credible information about the topic before they are able to amplify it.

Tweets with these labels are already de-amplified through our own recommendation systems, but these new prompts will give people more context on why they're labeled so people can make more informed decisions on whether or not they want to amplify them to their followers.

2) We will encourage people to add their own commentary prior to amplifying content by prompting them to Quote Tweet instead of Retweet. People who go to Retweet will be brought to the Quote Tweet composer where they’ll be encouraged to comment before sending their Tweet.

Though this adds some extra friction for those who simply want to Retweet, we hope it will encourage people to not only consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation.

3) We will also prevent “liked by” and “followed by” recommendations from people you don’t follow from showing up in your timeline and won’t send notifications for these Tweets.

These recommendations can be a helpful way to discover interesting conversations, but we are removing them because we don’t believe “Like” provides explicit consideration prior to amplifying Tweets to people who don’t follow the author or the relevant topic.

This will likely slow down how quickly Tweets from accounts and topics you don’t follow can reach you, which we believe is a worthwhile sacrifice to encourage more thoughtful and explicit amplification.

4) We will only surface Trends in the “For You” tab (where the vast majority of people discover Trending items) in the United States that include additional context. That means there will be a description Tweet or article that represents or summarizes why that term is trending.

We believe this will help people more quickly gain an informed understanding of the high volume public conversation in the U.S. and also help reduce the potential for misleading information to spread.

As with any other set of product changes, we will learn, observe, and iterate based on the impact of these changes, to inform both our strategy around future global elections and Twitter's overall product experience.