Twitter Gets Whiny About Your Tweet Screenshot, Wants You To Share Tweets Instead
Twitter continues to be one of the most popular social media apps for sharing one's thoughts to the rest of the world. Users often want to share a tweet they come across with others, and will take a quick screenshot to do so. While Twitter is elated to have people sharing tweets with others, the platform prefers its users to do so through a method that makes it easy for everyone to have a path back to the full conversation. This has prompted the company to urge users to use built-in features, other than sharing through a screenshot.
Some users on Twitter have noticed a pop-up when they attempt to screenshot a tweet. The prompt asks the person if they would rather share the tweet, or copy the link for tweet, instead of taking a screenshot. Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst, shared a couple instances where he was presented with a pop-up when attempting to take a screenshot of a tweet. Others replied to Navarra's tweet with experiences of their own when receiving the pop-up, while many stated they were not yet seeing it just yet.
A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch, "Millions of Tweets are shared from Twitter to other platforms every day. We want to make Tweets accessible to everyone, even when they leave our platform, and allow others an easy way back to the full conversation on Twitter." The company went on to say it is currently testing the new prompt system with a small group of people on iOS, in order to let them know there are other methods of sharing tweets with others.
The social media company has been experimenting with various ways to increase active user engagement on the platform. In the company's Q2 2022 earnings results in July, Twitter stated that its monetizable daily active users had increased 16.6% year on year to 237.8 million.
For those who are receiving the pop-up, they say that you cannot close the dialogue box, but that it will disappear after a bit of time. There is no word yet as to whether or not this feature, or nuisance as the case may be, will find its way to all Twitter user accounts at some point in the future.
