Facebook hopes tiny labels on posts will stop users confusing satire with reality

[skitzorat]

Yes, really.

 

We have reached that point.....

 

Facebook hopes tiny labels on posts will stop users confusing satire with reality

 

Facebook is adding labels to satire pages in the News Feed

By James Vincent  Apr 8, 2021, 5:19am EDT

 

Satire pages will now be labelled as such, along with public officials, fan pages, and government news outlets.  Image: Facebook

Facebook is adding additional labels to posts from Pages that appear in users’ News Feeds in a bid to reduce confusion about their origin. These labels will include “public official,” “fan page,” and “satire page.” The company says it’s already started testing the deployment of these labels in the US, and will gradually add them to more posts.

Facebook hasn’t offered any explanation as to why it’s adding these labels, but identifying satire seems particularly important. Take a look at the social shares for any news articles written by well-known satirical sites like The Onion or The Babylon Bee and you’ll find plenty of people taking these stories at face value. In such a context these posts are essentially a type of misinformation, even if their creators did not intend this. Even high profile figures like former president Donald Trump have mistaken these stories for real reports.

 

This isn’t the first time the social network giant has tried to make the context of posts in the News Feed clearer. In June last year it began labeling media outlets which are “wholly or partially under the editorial control of their government.” Such outlets need labels, argued Facebook, because “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.”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22373291/facebook-label-news-feed-page-posts-fan-satire-public-official?

[rideforever]

Media companies around the world are in a deseperate battle to get some acreage in the new online territory as all traditional media is dying and the only way to do that is to terrify, twist reality, and show totally unnatural things ... with massive shock value, because that is the thing that makes money and keeps people coming back for more.

 

Last week a Supreme Court Justice in the US released a statement that these social media companies should be designated "common carriers" with the resulting constituional responsibility not to ban anyone.