Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Facebook 'satire' tag

Facebook is testing a new feature that warns users of satirical content posted from sites like the Onion.

Stories posted in users' feeds are being tagged as "[Satire]" in an apparent move to prevent them being mistaken for real news stories.

Satirical stories have provoked confusion and angry comments from some social media users.



In a move that could permanently cripple the Internet’s unchecked hoax industry, Facebook this week announced that it’s experimenting with a tag that will mark sites such as the Onion, Clickhole and Empire News as satire — and, hopefully, alert the millions of gullible people who share these sites as truth each week.




"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," a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC. "This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units."



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