Twitter Nudges Us to Actually Read

Twitter will soon nudge people to read articles before retweeting, a small step in the fight against misinformation.

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Many people tweet and retweet articles without reading the whole piece (or even reading any of it beyond the title). It’s a fact of contemporary society and a viral social media problem.

But Twitter is trying to fix that. “We shouldn't have to say this, but you should read an article before you tweet it,” a Twitter company tweet recently chastised its users. Soon, Twitter will encourage us to read before retweeting by giving us a prompt. If we try to retweet an article without opening it on Twitter, we’ll be asked if we want to open the article first. In research Twitter conducted this summer, people were 40% more likely to open an article if they received a prompt than if they did not.

This kind of push to influence behavior is called a nudge, and a lot of research has shown what Twitter found: Nudges work! In one study, more than 1,000 participants were asked to read an article about the decrease in HIV cases from either a respected news organization, Singapore’s The Straits Times, or from a made-up news organization, the Red Dot Review. Each participant actually read the same news article (regardless of the named source). However, half of the participants in each group received a nudge – a fact-check alert warning about potential misinformation in the article. Then researchers asked participants how likely they were to share the article.

What did they find? Participants were unlikely to share the news from the fake source whether they received a nudge or not. But those who read the article supposedly from the reputable Strait Times were significantly less likely to share if they received the nudge about possible misinformation. It turns out a nudge can remind us to think critically and ask questions about an article, and the source of that article, before sharing it.

Nudges can also come from social pressure. Daniel Levy, creator and star of the TV sitcom Schitt’s Creek, used Instagram to encourage his fans to join him in taking a free online course, Indigenous Canada. His nudge worked. 64,000 people soon signed up, more than had taken the course over the past 3 years, exposing many more people to the history of indigenous people in Canada. Similarly, in 2011, former Brazilian president Lula da Silva openly shared his throat cancer diagnosis, as well as his belief that it was caused by years of smoking. Google searches in Brazil for quitting smoking skyrocketed after da Silva discussed his illness.

We see nudges used in a wide range of contexts. Research has found that these kinds of government-backed nudges are often both successful and cost-effective in a range of situations, helping increase:

• Contributions to retirement savings
• Energy conservation
• University enrollment
• Vaccination rates

In fact, many governments have formed so-called nudge units that employ behavioral scientists to develop policies to change behavior for the public good. A good nudge is both inexpensive and easy to avoid. After all, we want to nudge people into doing the right thing—not coerce them. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, Singapore, and Australia are among the countries that have used this tactic.

So, Twitter’s nudges are likely to work—based on both their own research and existing research from psychological science. But we can all develop good nudge habits to avoid sharing misinformation. Anytime you consider sharing an article on social media, read it first, of course, but also ask yourself whether it’s a good source. If you’re concerned, dig a little deeper.