Facebook will try to make sure you've read an article before you share it

Facebook is a platform designed for sharing, but with the amount of misinformation, fake news and just plain nonsense being shared on Facebook every day, it's become a big problem.

On Monday, Facebook announced it will start testing a new feature that will nudge users to actually read an article before they share it. If you try to share a news article link that you haven't opened, Facebook will show a prompt encouraging you to open it and read it.

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"You're about to share this article without opening it," the prompt says. "Sharing articles without reading them may mean missing key facts."

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Even if a user hasn't read the article, though, they'll still be able to share it by tapping on the "Continue Sharing" button.

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Facebook's initiative follows a similar feature Twitter started testing in June 2020. A few months later, Twitter followed up with the results, which were encouraging. According to the company, its users opened articles 40% more often after seeing the prompt, and they opened articles before retweeting them 33% more often. Finally, some users gave up on retweeting after actually reading the article.

Facebook is different from Twitter in many ways, but Twitter's results are still a decent indicator that this kind of nudging will make users think twice before sharing something they haven't read.