Quick thread. I am really pleased about the FB timestamp change and I really hope other platforms will follow. But the blog announcing it highlights an unappealing arrogance...

2) Crucial bit: “Some news publishers have already taken steps to address this on their own websites by prominently labeling older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways.”

3) The crucial and different thing about what @guardian team did was that we DIDN'T only focus on our own website. Because that wasn't where the main problem was. In fact, we used Opengraph image to force timestamp into the platforms without their consent, with FB as a key focus

In painting this as a change to publishers' own websites, FB seems to give themselves credit for suddenly thinking that this might be helpful for their platform. But as you can read below, social was our focus due to clear patterns in our audience data https://www.cjr.org/innovations/you-may-hate-metrics-guardian-audience-twitter-images.php

5) This might well seem picky - to reiterate I am VERY glad that FB have done this. But I think it's important for publishers and platforms to remember that innovation in this space is most likely going to come from organisations with genuine expertise in news

6) Publishers should be bullish about their expertise in this space and let it lead innovation rather than just following platforms' lead. And platforms should listen as much as possible.