Facebook is adding extra labels to posts from Pages that show up in clients’ News Feeds in a bid to diminish confusion about their origin. These labels will incorporate “public official,” “fan page,” and “satire page.” The organization says it’s now begun testing the deployment of these labels in the US, and will slowly add them to more posts.
Facebook hasn’t offered any clarification concerning why it’s adding these labels, yet recognizing satire appears to be especially significant. Investigate the social shares for any news articles composed by notable satirical sites like The Onion or The Babylon Bee and you’ll discover a lot of individuals fully trusting these stories at face value.
In such a context these posts are basically a type of misinformation, regardless of whether their makers didn’t expect this. Indeed, even high-profile figures like former president Donald Trump have confused these stories for real reports.
This isn’t the first time the social network giant has attempted to make the context of posts in the News Feed more clear. In June a year ago it started labeling media outlets which are “wholly or partially under the editorial control of their government.”
Such outlets need labels, argued Facebook, in light of the fact that “they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state, and we believe people should know if the news they read is coming from a publication that may be under the influence of a government.”