Facebook To Show Warning Pop-Ups Before Users Share Articles About COVID-19

In an attempt to combat and curb the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, Facebook will now have a new notification pop-up that will provide more information any time a user shares virus-related content or links.

The notification pop-up would include a link that would direct the user to the company's coronavirus information centre and would include details such as when it was first shared and its sources.

The social networking giant said that the move would "help people understand the recency and source of the content before they share it" and also enable the user to access the COVID-19 Information Centre for credible information related to the novel coronavirus.

It further said that the mechanism has been built on the platform's existing recency notifications, which it launched in June to help cut down on the spread of older links that resurfaces and can misrepresent current events.

Facebook also added that credible content posted by government health authorities, as well as recognised global health organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), would be exempted from this notification screen.

"Over the past several months, our internal research found that the timeliness of an article is an important piece of context that helps people decide what to read, trust and share. News publishers in particular have expressed concerns about older stories being shared on social media as current news, which can misconstrue the state of current events," it said.

The company revealed Tuesday that it had removed 7 million posts about the coronavirus and added fact-checking labels to 98 million more.

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