Twitter on Thursday announced that it would restore the retweet functionality for users back to the way it was, no longer prompting users to add context to retweets.

The microblogging platform earlier this year had changed the way people retweeted, prompting users to Quote tweets instead of retweets to add more context ahead of the United States Elections.

“We’ll temporarily ask people to add their own commentary before amplifying content by prompting Quote Tweets instead of Retweets. We hope this encourages everyone to consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, and brings more thoughts, reactions & perspectives to the conversation,” Twitter had said.

However, it is now repealing the change and restoring the retweet functionality to the way it was after “learning from the product experience.”

Twitter said that the reason behind the decision is that even though the use of Quote tweets increased, a majority of users did not add proper context to the tweets.

“Our goal with prompting QTs (instead of Retweets) was to encourage more thoughtful amplification. We don’t believe that this happened, in practice. The use of Quote Tweets increased, but 45% of them included single-word affirmations and 70% had less than 25 characters,” Twitter said.

“The increase in Quote Tweets was also offset by an overall 20% decrease in sharing through both Retweets and Quote Tweets. Considering this, we'll no longer prompt Quote Tweets from the Retweet icon,” it said.

“We'll continue to focus on encouraging more thoughtful amplification. We believe this requires multiple solutions––some of which may be more effective than others. For example, we know that prompting you to read articles leads to more informed sharing,” it added.

The social media major last month had said that it would begin prompting users to read an article before retweeting.

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