The social network announced the new notification screen feature, which started rolling out globally on Thursday, was the result of internal research that found users on the platform consistently sought news that was both “timely and credible.”
“To ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook, the notification… 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,” said John Hegeman, VP of Feed and Stories.
In a blog, Facebook said publishers had “expressed concerns” that old news was often being shared alongside current events, potentially misleading readers.
Hegeman noted some publishers had addressed the problem “on their own websites” by labeling older articles, reducing outdated stories being shared as new.
Facebook said additional use cases for the prompt will be tested in the coming months, possibly for when users share links about COVID-19, such as directing users towards “authoritative health information” about the infectious disease.
“[By] providing more context, our goal is to make it easier for people to identify content that’s timely, reliable and most valuable to them,” Hegeman wrote in the blog.
The feature is similar in design and intent to an update that was tested on Twitter earlier this month. The Jack Dorsey-led platform rolled out a new prompt to Android users asking if they wanted to read an unopened article before sharing it.
“Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you tweet it,” read a post from the Twitter Support account on June 10. A Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek data-collection tests typically last “at least a few weeks.”
The aim was to “promote informed discussion.” Like the Facebook prompt, users were still able to share an unread post, without opening, if they chose to do so.
One major news publisher already using labels on older articles is The Guardian, which previously developed a system to clearly mark older stories as they are shared on social media.
That run-down of the system was authored by Chris Moran, the newspaper’s editorial innovation chief, who took to Twitter today to say he was pleased about the Facebook announcement but said its blog highlighted an “unappealing arrogance.”
In a series of posts, he wrote: “The crucial and different thing about what the Guardian team did was that we DIDN’T only focus on our own website.” Moran continued:
Moran concluded today: “To reiterate I am VERY glad that FB have done this. But I think it’s important for publishers and platforms to remember that innovation in this space is most likely going to come from organizations with genuine expertise in news.”
