Facebook urges users to read a news article before sharing it online

(Credit: Facebook)

To prevent misinformation from going viral, Facebook is testing a feature that will tell you to read a news article first before sharing it online.

“Starting today, we’re testing a way to promote more informed sharing of news stories,” the company said. noted. “If you’re going to share a news article link that you haven’t opened, we’ll display a prompt encouraging you to open and read it, before sharing it with others.”

The social network posted a screenshot of the feature, which shows the “read before sharing” popup appearing on a user’s Facebook app. “Sharing articles without reading them can mean missing key facts,” the prompt continues.

If the feature sounds familiar, that’s because Twitter tested the exact same system last June. To promote healthy discussion on the platform, Twitter began asking users to first read an article they haven’t clicked on before re-tweeting the story to the public.

The “read before retweeting” pop-up was successful enough that Twitter decided in September to roll out the feature to all users. During the test, the company found that users opened articles 40% more often after seeing the prompt. The feature also resulted in a 33% increase in people clicking the article link before retweeting.

However, Facebook and Twitter’s read-before-share system is essentially a pop-up, not a restriction. You can ignore the prompt and repost a news article whether you read it or not.

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Facebook did not say how extensively it would test the prompt. But in recent months, the company has worked to reduce the amount of political content on the platform, citing public feedback.

“One of the biggest comments we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. in January. “So one of the themes this year is that we’re going to continue to focus on helping millions more people participate in healthy communities.”

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