There's a new Facebook feature coming for all users that will prompt users before they share a news article if it is older than 90 days. Facebook announced that it will be introducing this feature in a blog post. The new feature is aimed to make the content on the platform more up to date and credible. However, users can still choose to share an article after the notification pops up.
According to Facebook, the feature comes after there were many concerns that old news can resurface on the platform and become widespread as if it is new. Facebook gave an example that a news article about a terrorist attack that occurred years ago can be misunderstood as if it has happened recently when it is shared.
In this regard, The Guardian did something similar last year by displaying the year of publication to the thumbnail of old articles when they would be shared on social media sites. Guardian said that this way it would become harder for old stories to be taken as something new.
Similar prompts are being added to different social media platforms, take Instagram for example, which started to warn users if it suspected that they are about to publish "potentially offensive" captions in their posts. Similarly, Twitter is also working on a feature to prompt users to read an article before retweeting it.
