LAST UPDATED: June 27, 2020, 09:00 a.m. EST: In a view to counter misinformation from being spread on social media, Facebook is rolling new “Article warning features”. Now Facebook will warn users before they share old news articles. Facebook will pop up a message on the screen whenever a user tries to share an article older than 90 days. Users can share the article after getting this message, if they want so. This popup is just to tell them that this article is quite old and may not be relevant today.
This new feature was announced by Facebook in a blog post shared on the official website. John Hegeman, VP Feed and Stories writes:
To ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook, the notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days, but will allow people to continue sharing if they decide an article is still relevant.
In recent days, fake news has become a huge problem over social media. Every Social media platform including Facebook is being criticized for not stopping the spread of fake news. Last year, Facebook announced the fact check feature that put a tag on mysterious articles posted on Facebook timeline.
Not just Facebook, Twitter is also alleged of spreading fake news. To stop this, twitter recently launched the read article feature that warns users to read the article before sharing it on twitter timeline. Instagram also started warning users before they posted “potentially offensive” captions in their posts.
Facebook is also testing the new uses of notification screens. This will be used to stop misinformation related to 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” says John Hegeman, Facebook VP.
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