Tech

Facebook testing ‘satire’ tag to help confused readers

SAN FRANCISCO — Purported news reports on Kim Jong Un being named “sexiest man alive” or a study that found most children are “unrepentant sociopaths” can be entertaining.

But such items have apparently caused enough confusion and even outrage that Facebook is introducing a “satire” tag for articles from parody news sites.

“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 spokeswoman told MarketWatch. “This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units.”

The Facebook representative would not elaborate on details of the test. But the announcement comes in the wake of satirical articles that have deceived not only readers but also established publications.

Two years ago, The Onion, one of the best known parody news publications, ran a piece that said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had been named “sexiest man alive.”

The article was picked up by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Onion
Last month, the magazine Science News ran a story titled “Schadenfreude starts young,” about a study that found children as young as 2 years old “feel joy at another’s misfortune,” cited another article in The Onion published in 2009 about a fake study that said most children are “unrepentant sociopaths.”

The sentence mentioning the Onion “study” was later deleted by the magazine, saying, “Science News regrets the error but does think the parody article is pretty funny.”

But it was later restored as the editors clarified, “The original intent of the author was to make light of the parody article mentioned above.”