Facebook Will Notify Users If They Share Articles Older Than 90 Days

In a bid to tone down misinformation and provide up-to-date content on its platform, Facebook will now alert users if they try to share articles that are older than 90 days. However, they’ll still be able to share it if they find it relevant.

“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,” the California-based company wrote in a blog post.

(Screengrab of the new feature)

Some news publishers have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labeling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways, stated Facebook's VP of Feed and Stories Mr. Hegeman.

Hegeman also said that in the coming months, they will also test other uses of notification screens. “For posts with links mentioning COVID-19, we are 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, our goal is to make it easier for people to identify content that’s timely, reliable and most valuable to them.”

In 2018, Facebook introduced the context button providing sources of articles in the News Feed. “When we ask people what kind of news they want to see on Facebook, they continually tell us they want information that is timely and credible. That’s why in 2018, we added the context button, which provides information about the sources of articles in News Feed.”

“Through providing more context, our goal is to make it easier for people to identify content that’s timely, reliable and most valuable to them,” Hegeman concluded.