Facebook Is Testing A New Feature To Ensure You Read Articles Before Sharing
Do you usually share news articles on Facebook that look interesting without actually reading them? Unfortunately, many of these pieces are fake or contain the wrong information, created merely to engage clicks and site traffic. Well, the social media giant has announced a feature that will tell you to check it first.
You will receive a gentle nudge on your device when you attempt to share any news article with your followers. As soon as you click the share button, the app will prompt you to open the site and actually read the contents. After you’ve spent some time on the site, you can return and freely share it on your timeline.
Strangely, nothing stops you from sharing it anyway. You’ll have the option to “Continue Sharing” without reading the article’s contents. We’re not sure how many people will be persuaded to follow the action of opening the site if you have the choice to ignore it.
Perhaps its competitor Twitter has some answers for us. When it performed a similar test in 2020, the results showed that 33% of users opened the articles more often before retweeting. After reading the contents and realizing how fake most of them were, the retweeting numbers dropped significantly.
It will be interesting to see what Facebook’s results will be after a few months.
