Back in April, Facebook launched a new Context Button in the U.S., to help Americans find “more background information” about articles they see in their News Feed, to help “provide more context for people so they can decide for themselves what to read, trust and share.”
This new Context Button is now rolling out in Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand, according to Facebook. The new feature to combat untrusted news sources comes ahead of the 2019 Canadian federal election.
The social network unleashed the Context Button this spring, after it was identified analytics firm Cambridge Analytica played a part in influencing the 2016 American presidential election, through the harvesting of user profile data from Facebook.
Facebook says it will now be easier to find out more information about publishers, including easily viewing their Wikipedia entry, along with related articles, plus how many times an article has been shared and where it has been shared.
The Context Button is the social network’s response in fighting ‘fake news’. Today’s Canadian release also will see expanded publisher details, such as showing their website/domain age, plus coverage now expands from articles to all links.
