Facebook to tag satirical articles to stop users falling for the Onion's jokes

[jakeXT]

Facebook is testing a new feature intended to stop users accidentally falling victim to satirical websites like the Onion, hoping that tagging articles could stop users accidentally believing joke stories.

If any of the users that are selected for the trial click through to a piece from the Onion and then go back to Facebook, the related stories that show beneath the link when users return will then feature a tag marking it out as satire.

"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 Ars Technica. “This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units."

Facebook said that the test had been happening for over a month and did not say whether the tag would be used on content from different websites, according to the statement.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-to-flag-satirical-articles-to-stop-users-falling-for-the-onions-jokes-9674483.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. It's hard to combat gullible and dumb.

[NV Whino]

2. Good

It's a sad day when satire becomes reality.

[djean111]

3. My sister is on Facebook a lot, and a couple of weeks ago she asked my opinion

about something that was forwarded to her by a right-wing facebooker - an article saying that a Muslim craft shop in Michigan was using the Hobby Lobby thing to force all of their female employees to wear hijabs, even if not Muslim. It was from the Daily Current, and if the article was read in its entirety, she would have seen the store owner also intended to cut off the hands of any thieving employees.

Right-wingers tend to take satire to heart, probably because they do not really understand the concept. Like thinking Steven Colbert is One of Them.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. DUers get fooled, too.

I can barely count the number of times I or someone else posted a comment to the effect of: "It's SATIRE!" after an OP, in a state of high dudgeon, posted something from the Onion or one of the lesser satire sites assuming it to be true. There's this thing called confirmation bias - because of it, people tend to assume something outrageous and awful about someone they don't like must be true. Confirmation bias can bite anybody in the butt, not just right-wingers.

[procon]

5. Its rather humbling to see

that we are now living in the real world Idiocracy. Where we were once great nation represented by world class statesmen who did not suffer fools gladly:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." - Abraham Lincoln

Now we are reduced to explaining to belligerent idiots that their pet conspiracy theories are not real.

'Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!" George W. Bush

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