Facebook doesn't like old news and will warn you when you want to post a news story that was published more than 90 days ago !
The social media platform will soon notify you when you attempt to share outdated news. The new notification will start rolling out globally today, and will appear via a pop-up message when the content you want to share is more than three months old.
The purpose of the new feature is to encourage users to check if what they want to share with their friends on Facebook is still relevant and valid.
“Over the past few months, our internal research has shown that the timing of an article is a significant factor in helping people decide whether to read an article, trust it, and share it,” said John Hegeman, vice president ofFeed and Stories.
The latest upgrade builds on tools introduced in 2018, such as adding more content to articles shared by users, including relevant news and publisher information from Wikipedia.
Facebook plans to test other forms of notifications in the coming months. One thing it is considering is directing users to the Covid-19when someone posts content related to the disease.
Hegeman added that rehashing old news can be a serious problem. When people recycle the same old articles, even though they may have been updated and changed, it can cause a lot of confusion for the general public.
While it's a significant move on Facebook's part, it Twitter 's launched an Android not the only social media platform looking to make users check the content they're about to share. Earlier this month, check that asked users if they actually read an article before including it in a tweet.
