Integrity
When I was leading the Facebook app integrity team in 2020, we were given the mission to reduce the number of regrettable reshares in News Feed.
We’d learned through user research that people don’t want to unknowingly share inaccurate, irrelevant, or misleading content and they wanted more context.
We’d also learned that reshared content was one of the largest vectors for misinformation. In fact, misinformation was 5-10X more likely to be present in reshared content than original content.
Our solution was to add friction to the reshare flow, causing users to pause and assess the information before sharing.
By introducing a pause in the sharing experience, and giving users additional context about the articles they see, we helped users be more informed about the content they shared. This meant that we greatly reduced the spread of misinformation.
The treatment we developed was applied to several different content types, beyond just misinformation. Reshare friction was later applied to out-of-context images, reported content, outdated news links, and anything related to COVID.
Categories that would trigger reshare friction
Product principles
Be Helpful. We want our interstitials to help the people who see them make more informed sharing decisions.
Do No Harm. We don’t want to make problems worse.
Be Transparent. We tell people why we’re showing them these interstitials.
Respect People’s Privacy. We won’t share information about an individual that isn’t already publicly accessible without a user’s consent.
Be Fact-Forward. We communicate facts, not opinions.