Anyone on Twitter before 2009 knows. There was no retweet feature. In other words, we could not immediately share what someone wrote by pressing a single button.
So, we would create a new tweet by copying the text of the tweet we wanted to share and add RT: @UserName at the beginning. It was still a tough job. Moreover, the 140-character limit was not enough. That's why there were grumbles about Twitter bringing a feature to automate this. Thereupon, Twitter opened the Retweet feature for a limited user for the first time on November 6, 2009, and then came a sequel. This innovation accelerated the flow on Twitter, paving the way for the phenomenon we call viralization. It even accelerated it so much that, prior to the last US election, Twitter made the quoted retweet the default feature - temporarily - so people could think for a few more seconds before posting. They took back this slowing feature, as if the nature of humans changed after the election. But speed always meant disaster.
REGRET OF THE INVENTORS
You may have heard that Chris Wetherell, who led the team that developed Twitter's Retweet button in 2009, later regretted this feature. In an interview with BuzzFeed in 2019, he made the analogy of "we were giving a loaded gun to a 4-year-old kid" and said that this feature was destroying both the platform and the internet. Because it has been a great accelerator for disinformation, hate speech and lynchings. Wetherell, who once said that he thought "this feature puts the power in the hands of the people", now changes this sentence a little: "Oh no, we put the power in the hands of the people." Wetherell also finds the solution of forcing a quote retweet before the 2020 US election useless. He has two suggestions for a solution. First; detect accounts that regularly spread bad content and taking away their right to retweet temporarily or permanently. (requires good moderation of course) Second; limiting how many retweets a tweet can be. Let's say this number is 100. That's when a tweet can't be retweeted by the 101st person and virality is under control. This is a bit like the feature in Whatsapp that you cannot send a message to more than 5 people or groups at the same time.
We can say that a similar regret was also experienced by Justin Rosenstein, who developed Facebook's like button around the same time, albeit with a little more hesitation. These people, perhaps a little late, are aware of what they are causing. The problem is that there are millions of users around the world who don't even think about how much their lives could have changed with these simple features. However, a retweet without a second thought can mean the butterfly effect metaphor becomes reality. You may not be convinced that your follower count is insignificant, but sometimes even having a follower can change a lot.
EDIT YOUR TWEET FEATURE
Similar to the grunt that rose on the platform before Twitter developed its retweet button, it's been ramping up for the edit feature for a few years now. To be remembered, Elon Musk, who bought Twitter and then gave up, and therefore sued the platform, also brought up this feature. Twitter, which has already started working on this project, announced at the beginning of September that it was testing the feature. The feature, which will first be offered to those who subscribe to the service called Twitter Blue, will probably be opened to everyone later on. According to the first information, a tweet can be edited several times in the first 30 minutes after it is posted, and if it has been edited, an icon will appear next to it. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, although this feature sounds good at first, it is not difficult to see that it is very open to abuse. For example; If the tweet is changed for the purpose of disinformation and fraud after it has gained a certain virality, how many of those who shared this tweet or left alike will be aware of it? How will abuse be prevented? Yes, when I make a typo and the tweet spreads, it's hard for me to delete it; it would be nice to just put a comma or complete a word with a missing letter, correct a spelling mistake. That's why I'm looking forward to the coming of the edit feature, but the risks that platforms take with the features they add are also worrying. As such, I think the potential harm of the feature outweighs the benefit. Maybe we'll read the developers' regrets about this feature years later, who knows?
The Man Who Built The Retweet: “We Handed A Loaded Weapon To 4-Year-Olds”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet