Facebook on Thursday announced that it has started rolling out a notification globally to let people know when news articles that they share are more than 90 days old. The new feature is being introduced to let people know additional context about the content that they are going to share.
A notification screen will appear when people click to share articles which are older than 90 days. The sharing of articles older than 90 days will still be allowed if the user feels it is relevant. The change is to ensure people have the context they need to make informed decisions about what to share on Facebook.
Facebook notes that an internal research has found that the timeliness of an article is an important piece of context that helps people decide what to read, trust and share. Publishers have been concerned with the sharing of old news on social media which is viewed as current news by readers at many times. Certain publishers have already taken steps to address on their own by labelling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways.
Facebook will also test others uses of the notification screens for COVID-19 related information that would provide information about the source of the link and directs people to the COVID-19. Facebook is providing more context to let people identify content that is timely, reliable, and valuable.
