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What If Social Media Companies Forced Us To Read Articles Before Sharing Them?

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It has become one of the defining characteristics of modern social media and one of the great enablers of the digital falsehoods and foreign influence that deluge the modern digital world: the propensity to share an article without reading it. Three years ago, one study found that more than 60% of the links shared on social media were broadcast to the world without the sharer ever reading the article they were promoting. Whether based on the headline alone or merely on the commentary of others, social platforms have trained the digital generation to “share first and read later.” What if platforms instead required us to read articles before sharing them?

What might it look like if social media platforms instituted basic technical and interface mechanisms to prioritize or label link shares from those who actually read an article versus those who merely forwarded it along without reading it?

For example, what if Twitter modified its curation algorithm to prioritize shares from users who actually read an article and the amount of time they spent reading that article versus those who did not read an article or merely glanced at it? A share from a user who merely forwarded the link from another user without clicking on it would appear at the bottom of surfaced results for that link. In contrast, a user who not only clicked on the link but spent considerable time on the page consuming its contents would be listed towards the top of the search results. Raw duration spent on a page would not factor into the ranking to ensure that users do not game the system, but rather the system would assess whether they spent sufficient time to have actually meaningfully consumed its contents.

Alternatively, or in addition to just prioritization, Twitter could display a special icon or badge beside each shared link where the sharer actually read the page they are promoting. This would make it clear to other users that the person sharing or commenting on a link actually read the article in question and is not merely blindly basing their understanding on the comments of others.

Combining both approaches would yield the best results, in that informed commentary and shares would appear at the top of search results and when consulting the feed of a specific Twitter user, a viewer would be able to tell which of their commentaries were based on actual first person consumption of that content versus based on third party understanding.

Why don’t social media companies institute such policies?

Asked whether Twitter had considered implementing algorithmic prioritization and/or visual signifiers that a user had read the link they were sharing, a spokesperson did not comment.

As Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites look to ways they can combat the spread of digital falsehoods and rumors, forcing their users to consume content before sharing it would go a long way towards slowing the viral spread of obvious falsehoods. If someone shares a link to an article claiming it says the Pope endorsed Trump but the article never makes any mention of either the Pope or Trump, today that link would likely still spread virally because few would actually take the time to click the link and review its contents to see what it actually says.

Forcing users to read articles before sharing them would lead users to realize that the link does not actually support the commentary associated with it and halt its spread before it has gone very far.

In the end, even simple algorithmic and interface changes like this could have an outsized impact on slowing the spread of digital falsehoods.