Facebook added a new feature yesterday that allows its users to nominate a person they consider to have extensive knowledge about a certain topic the ‘Group Expert’.
Imagine being in a Best Pizza Toppings group discussing whether pineapple goes on pizza, providing all these facts about how the history of Italian cuisine never used pineapple as an ingredient, only to find that you’ve joined a group of pro-pineapples who’ve nominated one of their own to be the group expert. Even though you know they’re wrong, they now have a title that ‘claims’ they know better. Time to leave.
The idea isn’t intended to be for petty reasons such as that. If you’re looking online for specific information about car maintenance such as how to check the oil levels or tire pressure for example, you’ll be able to trust the person who answered your question as they’ll have a group expert badge underneath their name as they’ve been nominated by other people who consider them knowledgeable. This badge will be visible on posts, comments as well as in the Q&A feature.
Like in the case of the earlier mentioned Best Pizza Topping group, what if a bunch of people nominate someone who clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about? The admins can remove the group expert’s title at any time. Even though a person received a group expert badge from multiple people, you should still take anything they say with a pinch of salt because it’s not like they have an actual qualification that makes them an expert.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, the company partners with independent third-party fact checkers to verify information. Users can also report content to admins as misleading which will make that group expert appear less in search results.
At the moment, Facebook is testing how it can make these experts easier to be found by admins. Currently, they’re asking specific users who are well educated on specific topics to add which specific areas of it they’re well informed about. This will allow Group admins to search for these topics in order to find these people and invite them to their group to be experts. This feature is intended to help groups grow as they can also invite followers who have recently interacted with their main page to be members of the group.
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