Unraveling the Shifted Semantics in Facebook's Changed Page Labels

Unraveling the Shifted Semantics in Facebook’s Changed Page Labels

Facebook has been making a lot of changes lately, and in April 2021 the company introduced new Page labels. These labels are meant to give users a better understanding of the Pages they interact with on the platform.

At launch, the feature is only available to users in the US. If you’ve come across this feature and are curious about what it means, you’ll find all you need to know about the various labels in this article.

What Each New Facebook Page Label Means

Image Credit: Facebook

Page labels are designed to help categorize the different types of Pages on Facebook to avoid confusion. With these new labels, you can tell whether a Page belongs to a public official or whether it’s a fan or satire Page.

Here’s what each of the new Page labels means:

Public Official

Most social media platforms allow users to operate parody accounts of public officials. While posts from parody accounts could be fun to engage with at times, they could sometimes be so well-written and realistic that some users may be tempted to take the story seriously.

Then there’s the problem of scammers who pose as public officials to take advantage of people or spread fake news.

The Public Official Page label provides you with an easy way to tell an official Page from parodies or other accounts.

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Fan Page

It sometimes can be hard to tell, at a first glance, if a post on your News Feed is from an official page or a fan Page. But that’s changing too. The Fan Page label helps you instantly identify whether a Page is run by fans.

This means that the Page isn’t a celebrity or sports club’s official Page.

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Satire Page

Facebook has not been shy about cracking down on Pages or Groups that deliberately spread misinformation. But while that has worked to reduce misinformation on the platform, satirical Pages face the problem of being mistaken as actual news Pages by some users.

The Satire Page label lets you know a Page is not sharing real news, but stories that satirize real events and news that should not be interpreted as true events.

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Why Is Facebook Adding Labels to Pages?

Facebook has been criticized for not doing enough to tackle false news. The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US elections heightened these criticisms.

False information about the COVID-19 vaccine and the results of the 2020 US elections were spread widely on the platform and Facebook has since then been trying to reduce the likelihood of false news showing up in users’ feeds.

The Page labels are another way Facebook is trying to patch up potential sources of misinformation or misinterpretation.

Facebook Needs to Do More

While this might be a step in the right direction, this may not be enough. Adding a faint light grey “Satire Page” label underneath the bolder, darker page name could hardly be considered an effective way to help users tell an official page from clones.

For the Page labels to serve their purpose, Facebook needs to at least make the labels stand out, so that they’ll be more visible.