Facebook Testing ‘Satire’ Tag

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Facebook has confirmed it is experimenting with labelling some links as satire to help users confused by spoof headlines.

Arstechnica’s Sam Machkovech spotted that “[Satire]” has been added to the start of the text in some links to the Onion. At the moment the text only appears in the related articles section, which shows three suggested links after you’ve already clicked to read a linked piece in full.

Facebook confirmed that:

We are running a small test which shows the text ‘[Satire]’ in front of links to satirical articles in the related articles unit in News Feed. This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units.

Of course, it’s not the first such disclaimer that makes you wonder if it’s really necessary…


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