Looking at an article on Facebook and suddenly discovering that it was written a year ago? Facebook from now on will warn you if you want to share an article that is older than 3 months.
It has happened to everyone. You look at a friend or relative's Facebook activity and see that they share a seemingly topical comeye news article with a nice and catchy title, and when you open the link you find out that it was written three years ago and contains outdated information.
For these cases from today Facebook is launching a feature which will warn users before they share an article older than 90 days. When you click the share button on an old article, you'll see one notice. It's still not clear if it also works by simply copying and pasting a link. Of course, many times old news is still relevant, so Facebook will allow you to share the article if you want, provided you click on the warning.
Facebook states that "the timeliness of an article is an important part that helps people decide what to read, trust and share, and that they are concerned about the old news that misinterprets current events."
Think about all the headlines you read and while you do not click on them, your perception of current events is probably influenced by what you see people sharing in their streams. Many readers do not sit down to read an article line by line but are content with the title, let alone the date.
The Facebook is considering other types of warning tags, such as provision additionaly content related to articles related to COVID-19, including background on the source of the link and a link to COVID-19 Information Center for more reliable health information.
Twitter recently implemented a feature that alerted users before sharing an unread article.
