Facebook follows Twitter’s lead add new warning directions when users are going to share an article on Facebook if they have not even opened the link themselves.
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As explained by Facebook:
“As of today, we are testing a way to promote more informed sharing of news articles. If you’re going to share a news article link that you did not open, we’ll show you a quick encouragement to open and read it before sharing it with others. ‘
As you can see, the directions will warn people that they are about to share a link they did not open, with a brief explanation of the possible issues with this approach.
Ideally, this will enable more people to re-share links without understanding the full context, which can help reduce misinformation and anxiety among Facebook users.
As noted, Twitter unlinked share alerts added last June, which they said led to users opening articles 40% more frequently, and slowed the rate of poorly informed reinforcement.
Twitter’s results show the effectiveness of small friction measures in the sharing process, which can lead to more informed, measured debate and discussion, by simply asking users to take a moment to consider their actions.
Facebook will on the same hope and with a growing number of people to now get at least a portion of their news content from The Social Network, maximizing informed engagement and subsequent debate is an important consideration for the platform as it seems to play a more positive role in current discussion and want to play part.
Facebook also has alerts for users when they share an article it is more than 90 days old, which aims to delay the deception of older content, while Facebook’s algorithm also takes into account the amount of time you spend reading an article after opening a link to measure your relative interest in the content.
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Facebook therefore already has some measures in place to counter less informed sharing and distribution, but these new directions are a more direct approach to encouraging users to be more actively interested in what they share, rather than upset over the heading, or take it at face value.
This is something we all do. How many times have you noticed a headline while scrolling through your entries and considered it as an indication of the full story without actually opening the link? I will often notice this when I talk to people, like ‘oh, is it not because there was a new report on rising taxes?’ But I do not know the full story, because I have not actually read the article – but the problem is that many people then start full debates based on this shallow understanding of the matter and / or their emotional response to a headline. , on which many newspapers now prey to maximize engagement.
If this small measure gets more people to take an extra moment to read the full context, it could have a huge impact – and as Twitter results show, it could be an effective measure in this regard.
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