Twitter Uses Emojis To Help Avoid Mindless Re-Tweeting

Recently, Twitter rolled out a test for users to help them use the functionalities of the platform more thoughtful, including tweets, retweets, and replies. In the quest of mitigating some potential problems caused by these tools in the future, such as dunking, ratio, or pile-on, the micro-blogging site is set to launch several experiments in the next weeks. From that, Twitter promises to help us review the way we use the said functionalities on our own.

David Gasca – a senior director at Twitter – has shed a light on how these small changes will take place. First and foremost, users will no longer have to use the compose field to quote-tweet as Twitter adds an emoji to a re-tweet. According to Gasca, this will help them avoid mindless re-tweeting with a pause for thought when they’re about to dunk on anyone.

Following that, Twitter will recommend users to use an emoji when replying with their tweets. For example, using “heart eyes” emoji is more than words. In contrast, when users choose to use negative emojis, there’ll be a pop-up notification questioning them that “Why do you disagree?” As per Gasca, this will hopefully lead to considered debates, rather than endless wars on Twitter.

In addition to those experiments, the platform is balancing itself with several initiatives. Last week, the company revealed that it was applying bans on political ads (though there are some exceptions).