Facebook is taking another step to help curb the spread of misinformation on the platform. The social networking site has ofter been criticized for its lack of scrutiny over spread of fake news. The company has now introduced a feature where Facebook users will be prompted to reconsider sharing a news article that is more than 90 days old. This new feature will be rolled out globally.
This new notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days. However, this feature in itself won’t stop the user from sharing that article. It will allow the user to continue sharing if they decide the article is still relevant.
Similar to this feature, Facebook added the context button in 2018 which provides information about the sources of articles in News Feed.
“Over the past several months, our internal research found that the timeliness of an article is an important piece of context that helps people decide what to read, trust and share, said the company.
News publishers expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events.
The company claimed that news websites are also trying to deal with this problem of sharing old news on their own. These websites are prominently labeling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways.
Over the next few months, Facebook will also test other uses of notification screens. “For posts with links mentioning COVID-19, we are exploring using a similar notification screen that provides information about the source of the link and directs people to the COVID-19 Information Center for authoritative health information,” said the social network.
With Inputs from Agencies
