What is the “i” that appears on Facebook links

Facebook has introduced a new feature in its latest update to allow users to get more information about information sources

Facebook. The web version of the social platform has been updated with new features that, in addition to providing new security systems to prevent further scandals on the loss of data for users, allow users to find out what the source of a link is and how reliable it can be.

Maybe you have already noticed, but when you scroll your wall, to the right of the links shared by your friends or Pages you follow appears a clickable "i". From here  we can get information about the source we are linking to. The "i" appears at the bottom right of posts posted by news sites, e-commerce and virtually any type of portal outside the Facebook platform. The i has a dual function. In the case of information posts we will know if the source is reliable or not and therefore it is useful to prevent fake news, while in the case of malicious sites we will be warned if the portal has already been discovered by the various companies for computer security.

How to use the new Facebook feature

Getting news about a source outside the social media through the i in the various posts is very simple. Once we hover the mouse over the i we can click on it to open a new tab in which we will receive a full report on that source. Specifically, the date of registration in the case of a newspaper, some information taken from Wikipedia in the case of other sites and so on. The main purpose of this update is to avoid the spread of fake news on the social network, but above all it offers a tool for users to protect themselves from believing untrue news. In addition, when a user realizes that the news reported has been created by an unreliable site, he will avoid sharing it, thus managing to stop the virality that is often the real weapon of fake news on Facebook. Will this new update be enough to make information on Mark Zuckerberg's social media more reliable and of high quality?