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Facebook appears to have, with no notice, entirely pulled bylines out of share cards.On twitter.com
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I've been watching this for a while and it doesn't seem like a one off thing or temporary error.Permalink On twitter.com
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I wasn't well inclined towards Facebook's claims they were trying to do something about "fake news" before, but now I'm even less inclined. Any claim that Facebook makes about trying to combat content fraud is bullshit as long as bylines aren't on share cards.Permalink On twitter.com
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Knowing the authors of content on your feed is as essential a part of media literacy as the source publication. Especially in the world Facebook has built which hinges trust on personal connections.Permalink On twitter.com
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Notably, the linked bylines, which would send you to author pages seem to have disappeared, but their occurrence was so intermittent it is hard to tell.Permalink On twitter.com
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There are only two conceivable reasons I can imagine Facebook doing this: They believe that the only meaningful trust signal is who shares a piece. They are actively opposing news media positioning as a trusted source.Permalink On twitter.com
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Let's put 2 to one side. If 1 is true it is ludicrously, patently stupid, but exactly the type of position they would take. And it means they really don't give a crap about fixing their "fake news" problem.Permalink On twitter.com
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By removing bylines, Facebook makes itself a collaborator with those who seek to misinform Americans and citizens everywhere.Permalink On twitter.com
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Some additional double checking: the Facebook provided Open Graph debugging tool no longer recognizes thePermalink On twitter.com
"article:author"Open Graph metadata node, which is where Facebook previously advised publications to place links to author FB pages.
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Nor does the Open Graph debugger recognize thePermalink On twitter.com
meta name="author"node, which previously populated bylines not in the Open Graph schema.
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I wrote in detail about why byline transparency is vital to the success of any media organization. It's hard to see how Facebook's removal of bylines could be anything other than harmful to news literacy & media orgs. medium.com/@aramzs/authorship-value-and-the-medias-lost-profits-dabe7d1726c8Permalink On twitter.com
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I've been checking other sites. It appears that thePermalink On twitter.com
<meta name="author"tag is no longer being parsed by LinkedIn or Google+ either. Though it was never on an official spec, this tag was used by years to designate bylines on most social media sites.
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Presumably the excuse for the depreciation of authorship data on social networks is the eventual adoption of schema(dot)org microdata markup, however even those sites who have adopted that markup or JSON-LD are not seeing it parsed by social media.Permalink On twitter.com
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If you are curious to see if your page is implementing structured data properly, here's a useful tool: search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/Permalink On twitter.com
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It looks like Facebook will use links to author pages (even though they no longer show in the debugger) but they only show up *after* you click an article. Still no bylines on the card.Permalink On twitter.com
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And this may only be on mobile, as far as I've seen.Permalink On twitter.com
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