The feature, currently being piloted on iOS, desktop and mobile, uses public information sourced from websites such as Wikipedia.
Facebook’s testing was first reported by Social Media Today, referencing several posts on Twitter, before the pilot was confirmed by TechCrunch.com.
The tech news website also found a flaw in the feature around certain topics, with the tool being able to generate information about the film Joker from the same search term, but not for fellow box office hit Parasite.
New? Facebook shows Wikipedia snippits in search results
h/t @jc_zijl pic.twitter.com/zcbQJmauhE
— Matt Navarra | 🚨 #StayAtHome (@MattNavarra) June 9, 2020
The box has been compared to Google’s Knowledge Panels, launched in 2012 to enable users to “search for things, people or places that Google knows about […] and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query”.
“Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth.
“It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects,” a post on Google’s official blog reads.
News of the testing by Facebook comes days after the launch of Facebook News in the US, and is the latest step by a social media platform to present accurate data in search results.
In a bid to tackle misinformation around COVID-19, YouTube introduced panels linking to health advice in its searches, with CEO Susan Wojcicki revealing on Thursday that these have been shown to users more than 200 billion times.
Meanwhile with searches, it was announced that when users browse YouTube for coronavirus topics, on average, 94% of the videos in the top 10 results are from “high authority channels”.
Facebook is yet to make an official announcement about its information panel feature.
Want More?
Find out about Twitter’s test of a prompt to read news articles before sharing them, or read Twitch’s latest update following a surge in music copyright claims.
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