Social media can be a wonderful, entertaining thing, or it can be cesspool of misinformation perpetuated by laziness. Thankfully last year, Twitter started prompting users to read articles before re-tweeting, now Facebook is ready to follow that example.
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
The tweet from the Facebook Newsroom outlines the changes that — currently in a limited test — users can expect. If you try to share an article without opening the link, you’ll be prompted to read it first. This is an effort from the social media giant to combat the surprising number of users who share articles based purely on headlines.
For now, you’ll be able to override the prompt and post it anyway. Hopefully the trend will follow Twitter, with the percentage of users reading before sharing increasing significantly.
