Facebook has started rolling out a new feature on its platforms that will restrict users to share old news. The company revealed that it will show a notification screen that will let people know if they share an old news article.
The company says that it will alert users when they share news articles, which are older than 90 days. The notification screen will appear when people click the share button on articles older than 90 days but will allow people to continue sharing if they decide an article is still relevant.
“Over the past several months, our internal research found that the timeliness of an article is an important piece of context that helps people decide what to read, trust and share. News publishers, in particular, have expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events,” the company said in a blog post.
The company has also revealed that over the next few months, it will test other uses of the notification screens. The brand says it will use a notification screen to provide information about COVID-19 pandemic. It will provide information about the source of the link and direct people to the COVID-19 Information Center for authoritative health information.
Meanwhile, Facebook introduced a new Manage Activity feature on its platform. The feature is currently available on the mobile application and Facebook Lite. The brand says that the feature will be available for the desktop version in the future. The company says that with this feature, users can easily archive older posts that they don’t want others to see on Facebook.