Facebook and post sharing - Are they helping push #fakeNews over fact sharing?

(If you want to share this post on twitter, feel free to retweet me)

I recently attempted to re-share an end-of-year facebook post from a few years back and add some extra comments in light of 2020. The post I was trying to share had a link in it. When attempting to share that post, the share ONLY included the link from the original post and not the text I'd added to it.

I'm not the only one to have seen this - I found this article talking about the same topic - facebook used to have an option to share the original text before the redesign, but it is no longer there. Also their help pages explicitly state:

"When a friend shares a link that you posted, they can share the link with a wider audience than you originally shared it with. Keep in mind that any text you added in your post will not be shared"

 

Why is this a problem?

  1. The issue ONLY exists with posts that have links in them. A normal post with just text CAN be shared. If I'm trying to provide references to back up things I've said (particularly important when countering fake news in modern times) the text I write cannot be shared by others (unless they cut and paste obviously) even if it's public.
  2. It is frequently the case that dodgy news on social media is shared via pictures with quotes or charts printed on them or with "cut and paste this text". These can still be shared via the facebook share buttons, but posts with direct reference links to the original source material cannot. This just seems absurd.
  3. I suspect many people didn't use them, but facebook recently also removed the ability to create Notes (basically blog posts) which were ideal for posting lots of reference links in one article - it was something I used every so often when I had a lot to say, but that channel is no longer available to me.
  4. Disallowing sharing of original posts with references it makes it impossible to interact with the person's post which shared it, therefore fragmenting conversations which can frequently result in increased levels of confirmation bias by restricting the range of views (via comments) that are shown.
It's hard to see why they'd block this if the permissions allow, unless they prefer increased interaction and interest from posts with the way fake news articles are shown on their platform therefore increasing ad revenue (There's a conspiracy theory with a change they've made to back it up!)

I worry that facebook is going to become a cesspit of fake news in a way that is even more of a problem that on other platforms. Am I wrong to be concerned?

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