In another bid to curtail the spread of misinformation on its platform, Facebook on Thursday announced the global rollout of a notification screen that will let people know when news articles they are about to share are more than 90 days old.
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. Facebook in 2018 added the context button which provides information about the sources of articles in the 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. Facebook said that some news publishers have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labelling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways.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.
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