Twitter Doesn’t Want You to Make Screenshots. What’s Instead?

When you try to make a screenshot from Twitter, the microblogging service may try to persuade you otherwise. Why not share the tweet itself, it says? Or copy the link and paste it where you want to send it? This is the new feature meant to increase the engagement on Twitter itself, instead of letting great posts leak out without any connection to the source.

Twitter is now in heavy need of more engagement. Not only because the story with its acquisition by Elon Musk still goes on, and it has to prove its worth. Partly it’s because tweet screenshots have always been a real curse for Twitter. If you visit Know Your Meme or other site with memes, you will see that many pics there are indeed screenshots from Twitter. And there’s a gift behind the curse: no other social media requires being this brief and having less words make more sense.

If you already have the updated version of the Twitter app, as you try to make a screenshot, you will see the message with two buttons. One of them, “Copy link”, will enable you to share the original tweet so visitors can interact with the source. Another, “Share Tweet”, shares it directly in other apps. There is no “Retweet” button, because it’s already below the tweet anyway.

Of course, there are many reasons to make a screenshot. For example, you want to save some tweet to yourself to check whether the author is right about the future, and then post it in the comments. Searching for the original tweet will be harder. On the other hand, if you only have the screenshot, this searching isn’t easier, even if you enter the entire text. Anyway, Twitter doesn’t block this possibility completely: it just tells you there are other ways of sharing.

The new feature is now rolling out on iOS, though very gradually, and only select users are seeing the prompt. Are you already seeing it? Do you often screenshot tweets, r see these pictures in your feeds on other social media? We’d like to read your feedback in the comments!