Facebook Adds ‘Satire’ Tag to Articles from Sites Like ‘The Onion’

Facebook has made a big change to people's shares. When posting articles from comedy or satirical sites such as The Onion or Cracked, auto-generated "related articles" now carry the disclaimer "[Satire]" in front of the title as a disclaimer for pieces that are purposefully inaccurate for the sake of comedy.

While both The Onion and Cracked are affected by this change, posts from some sites such as the Buzzfeed spoof Clickhole do not appear to be changed.

A Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying, "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. This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units."

The Facebook "[Satire]" tag is not added to the article titles in your read-later lists or to articles attached to posts by you or your friends. It only applies to Facebook-generated content.

Many Facebook users have been tricked by satirical articles in the past, so the move is seen by some as helpful.

According to Daily Tech, "Labeling statements -- or articles -- as sarcastic/satirical may take away part of the fun. Many find humor in seeing confused individuals mistake such statements for truth. On the other hand, many seem to feel that it's better to be clear and forthright in the ambiguous world of internet text as the humor gained from misunderstandings is outweighed by the inevitable hurt feelings."