Facebook has long had a problem of misinformation. The social media platform is often ridiculed for it, but the company seems to be working on a new safeguard of sorts. Facebook is running a new test that will prompt users to read articles before sharing them on the platform, according to a tweet from the company. This is similar in idea to Twitter’s implementation of a similar feature last year, asking people to read articles before retweeting them.
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
That said, the test won’t completely lock you out of sharing, either. In case you don’t want to read the article, or if you’ve read it somewhere else already, you can go ahead and skip the prompt’s warnings and simply share the article on your feed as well.
