To combat fake news, Facebook will alert you if the article you are sharing is over 3 months old

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With election season gearing up and people spreading a lot of incorrect information regarding candidates and even things regarding COVID-19, it sometimes feels like you have to navigate through more fake information that real news to figure out what’s real.

Sometimes it’s innocent, but sometimes older news is pushed as current news to push a narrative. For those that are doing it with the best intentions, a new feature on Facebook may help slow some of the spread of out-of-date information. Previously, the company started putting context alerts on news posts, but this new feature will directly impact the sharing of articles.

Announced in a blog post, Facebook is rolling out a global change that will alert people that they are sharing articles older than three months. In quite possibly the biggest “no duh” moment of 2020, Facebook states, “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.”

That said, it does make sense. We’re all guilty of reacting to a headline without reading the content or checking the timeliness of the article, so this alert definitely makes sense.

Twitter has also taken similar steps in recent weeks, alerting people that share posts that they should actually, you know, read the post before sharing. Facebook’s rollout starts today, but it might not be instantly available to you.

What do you think? Glad to see Facebook adding this feature? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.