Facebook wants to make sure you’ve actually clicked on that news link before re-sharing it on the social media platform, with the company testing a new prompt on the platform.
On 10 May, the company announced it was working on a new prompt for sharing news articles.
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If users click the share option on a link without having read it, Facebook will notify them and say that sharing articles without reading may result in them missing key information.
Facebook made the announcement on its official Twitter profile.
Starting today, we’re testing a way to promote more informed sharing of news articles. If you go to share a news article link you haven’t opened, we’ll show a prompt encouraging you to open it and read it, before sharing it with others. pic.twitter.com/brlMnlg6Qg
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) May 10, 2021
“Starting today, we’re testing a way to promote more informed sharing of news articles,” the company said.
“If you go to share a news article link you haven’t opened, we’ll show a prompt encouraging you to open it and read it, before sharing it with others.”
A Facebook spokesperson told Recode that the company will test the link-sharing prompt with around 6% of its global users.
Facebook is not the first social media platform to introduce this kind of prompt. In July 2020, Twitter tested a prompt that asked if users wanted to open a link before retweeting it. The company rolled the prompt out further in September. It also later introduced disclaimers on tweets that it identified as containing misinformation.
Following its introduction, Twitter reported that users opening articles after seeing the prompt had increased by 40%. It also reported people opening articles before retweeting had increased by 33%.
In addition, Twitter rolled out a prompt last week to combat offensive tweets. The prompt will appear before a tweet is posted if it’s identified as containing potentially harmful or offensive language.
Feature image: Facebook
