Facebook is continuing their efforts to give people more context about what they read on the social network as an attempt to steam spread of fake news.
A test that began on October 5, Facebook added context to article links appearing in people’s new feeds by attaching information about the publisher that’s pulled from sources like the publisher’s Wikipedia page, according to a company announcement. How will Facebook be able to identify if a link shared corresponds with an article versus a non-article web page? A Facebook spokesperson has yet to respond on the matter.
In order to access the information, people will have to tap a button that appears above and to the right of the link’s headline, labeled “i.” Tapping the button will make an “About This Article” overlay pop up appear that will carry the contextual information.
The Wikipedia-sourced publisher description will only appear when one is available. That will also be the case with other information that Facebook may use to augment an article. If there are Related Articles available for a given article, then Facebook will include those. Facebook might even add information about how an article is being shared, such as a heat map plotting where the article was shared the most.