You would think that it would be obvious to people that an article or a page is satire and not actually true, but as we’ve seen over the years, people are easily fooled on the Internet. Facebook has been a hotbed of users sharing satire posts like they’re the real deal and so now they want to help educate users as to what is actual news and facts and what is from a satire account. They are now testing out putting a small “Satire Page” label to the respective pages.
If you really think about it, labeling something as satire kind of defeats the purpose of this “genre”. But people keep falling for them and believing it’s real, which sometimes can lead to harmful choices in real life. So Facebook has decided to test out this new label for satire pages so people will not be confused. Well, of course, that is if they read the label and understand what satire really means. Facebook is putting the label below the name of the page in posts that will appear in your News Feed.
This is actually just the first step in adding Page labels within the platform. Soon you’ll also see labels for Fan Page or Public Official for various personalities, brands, and other entities that have pages on Facebook. The purpose is to let people know where that post is coming from so they can also understand the context or why they’re seeing that kind of post on their feed. It should make it easier to determine where that post is coming from.
As for labeling satire pages, the goal is really to lessen the number of users who share satire posts believing it’s the real thing instead of just a humorous, legitimate commentary. As we said, it may be weird for some to actually see something labeled as satire, but times like these when misinformation can mean a matter of life and death, better to make sure that people understand what is true and what is trying to be funny.
This is still a test so we might see some changes to the label and how it will appear when it does roll out. They’re testing it out now only in the U.S so let’s see if they’ll also eventually roll it out to other territories.