Facebook is rolling a notification screen globally to warn users against sharing outdated content that is more than 90 days old. users will have to choose between “Go back” or to click continue if they’d still wish to share the old content.
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.
Facebook has as well acknowledged that old stories shared out of their original context play a role in spreading misinformation.
“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. News publishers, in particular, have expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events. 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have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labelling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways.” Facebook said in a blog.
In dew course, Facebook will be testing other uses of notification screens. For posts with links mentioning COVID-19. Further, Facebook will also be 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.
Through providing more context,” Facebook’s goal is to make it easier for people to identify content that’s timely, reliable and most valuable to them.”