Facebook has announced that it will introduce a notification to let you know if you are about to share content that is more than 90 days old. This will give you the choice to “go back” or still go ahead and share the content, but with the knowledge that it is outdated.
The social media giant has acknowledged that old stories shared in different contexts than the original, have a hand in spreading misinformation. Facebook said that in particular, news publishers were concerned about the old stories being recirculated as breaking news.
“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,” Facebook Vice President of Feed and Stories John Hegeman wrote on the company’s blog.
The company has been experimenting with a number of notifications over the last few months. Last year, Instagram introduced a pop-up notification to discourage users from sharing offensive comments. Just like the new notification, users were prompted to “go back” or to click through. The initial feedback indicated that the prompt could help shape users towards better behaviour online.
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Following the introduction of the notification, Facebook announced that it is considering introducing more notifications to help curb the spread of misinformation.
This includes pop-ups for Covid-19 posts that would help provide more context and source links towards public health resources.
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