Last year, a similar measure was introduced by another social media giant Twitter on its platform, which prompts its users to read an article before they retweet it. This move has led to users opening articles 40% more often and also reduced the rate of inadequate awareness of the current news and events. On Monday, Facebook announced on the Facebook Newsroom Twitter account that it is testing the pop-up feature to promote more informed sharing of articles and curb misinformation. If the users want to share a news article link that they haven’t read, Facebook will show a prompt encouraging them to open it and read it, before sharing it with others or via a direct message. This prompt pops up on the users’ screen when they hit the share button. “You’re about to share this article without opening it,” the prompt says. “Sharing articles without reading them may mean missing key facts.” It provides users with the option to either open the article or continue sharing it without reading.
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) May 10, 2021 Currently, Facebook is testing the feature with only a small percentage of its global users on Android. In June last year, Facebook had rolled out a similar global notification screen that warns users if they are about to share an article that is over 90 days old and ones about COVID-19. The notification screen was to help people understand the recency and source of the content before they share it so that the content on the platform becomes more timely and credible.
