In an effort to reverse the flood of abuse on the platform, Twitter is rolling out a new feature which will show a self-moderation prompt to users who compose replies that the platform’s algorithms recognise to be abusive. The prompt effectively asks users to think twice before posting an abusive message.
Because it compels users to rethink and reflect on abusive tweets, Twitter’s new self-moderation prompt could be a promising step away from fast and furious social media posting and towards a more considered slow media – or “slowcial media”.
Twitter’s new feature
This isn’t the first time Twitter has trialled and released “nudges” aimed at addressing poor behaviour on the platform. In 2020, Twitter added misinformation labels to tweets in response to COVID-19 conspiracies circulating on the platform, which they say reduced the number of tweets quoting misleading information by 29%.