
Who shares the story, not who reports news, is what counts for casual readers - pmcpinto
https://qz.com/937590/for-casual-us-readers-the-person-who-shares-a-story-on-social-media-counts-for-more-than-the-actual-news-source
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HoppedUpMenace
Before deleting my FB account, friends and family would post stuff non-stop
all day long like any typical user, including photos, videos, live-stream,
ect... When it came to sharing news stories, friends and family would share
the most BS and ridiculous news stories and information imaginable, like "weed
cures cancer" or "FB will start charging soon!" or those "like" farm posts
that had some stuff you'd probably only see on rotten.com (is that still a
thing?) but because they were asking for prayers and such, it was given a pass
and "liked".

Anyhow, its funny how stuff like that got the most shares and likes from
friends and family while anything remotely related to reality and grounded in
truth was always looked over, such as anything reported by any legitimate news
agency. Basically, anything that was written by some random fake news website
was the most shared news by FB friends and family and taken seriously as fact
(I know cause of people's comments on shared posts) cause everyone on FB
trusts their friends and family and they help each other to boost their
narcissistic narratives and world views.

Anyhow, moral of the story is, when you got a huge following and you post like
crazy the most personal stuff, people support you no matter what you say,
especially if you're family. You can spread whatever rumor you want and
everyone will be on board every single time because shared news is always true
and FB friends are just as smart as you are, so you trust them.

~~~
ams6110
Not sure it's really a matter of trust. People just like juicy, sensational
stories, and stories that cater to their weaknesses. National Enquirer has
been in business since long before Facebook.

~~~
metaphorm
except National Inquirer was a 2 minute distraction while you stood in line
waiting to pay for your groceries, whereas Facebook is a life-dominating
addictive habit that displaces higher quality media consumption from the lives
of its users.

~~~
dexterdog
Some people actually buy that rag.

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nickbauman
I think this should be classified as a form of illiteracy. Maybe _media
illiteracy._ A form of illiteracy where the only truths are group-held truths.
An unwitting Shibboleth.

~~~
_rpd
16-17% more people said an article was "trustworthy" and "got the facts right"
if it was recommended by someone that they trusted. 49-50% of people were
still skeptical even then. This doesn't seem to be a dire sociological illness
so much as an expected, common sense finding.

~~~
nickbauman
Unless you consider the 16% as a block of voters. I don't think any president
has ever won more than a 16% margin of victory in my lifetime. Obama clocked
in at ~8%, which is considered very, very high.

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gingerbread-man
I'm struggling to remember the old Facebook, before it morphed into a (social)
"news" aggregator. A few years ago, my news feed was mostly clever status
updates and photos of some old high-school crush from last weekend. Now that
sort of content is on Snapchat/Twitter/Instagram, and Facebook has what's
left.

When was the last time facebook was genuinely _fun_ for anybody?

~~~
greenhouse_gas
Is it just me, or is it a relatively new thing that FB focuses on public
images/videos shared by friends rather than actual content _made_ by friends.

I mean, it used till be a thing that "FB is where you go to see what your
friends had for supper". Now it's more like " where you go to see news your
friends likes".

I actually liked the first version more.

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garrickvanburen
Interesting bastardization of a phenomenon documented in focus groups around
news from a nearly decade ago:

"If the news is that important, it will find me [through social channels]."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/politics/27voters.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/politics/27voters.html)

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samer66
I have always felt that was the case on FB and have been very keen to include
the reporter/author, in the post, in addition to the URL and the full copy
(partly because some maybe behind "censorship walls") I even try a "special"
cross posting to (reddit url of a story post, to get people to see the
conversation in the comments.

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singold
I have been thinking about this for a long time, it happens now on FB and
whatsapp but happened earlier on email.

It's like a chain of trust where everyone trusts the last person who shared
something but you never know on who you are trusting at the start of this
"chain" if you share. So people share a lot of BS :/

~~~
CM30
To be fair, that's also how a lot of news gets reported in the actual media
too. One forum or social media user says something interesting which then gets
picked up by a bunch of smaller blogs which then in turn attract attention
from well known news outlets.

It's how literal 'fake news' has gotten into the mass media. Because a bunch
of smaller sites fell for a fake news site quoting a (non existent) interview
from anther site, and then the likes of the Metro and Daily Mail assumed they
knew what they were talking about.

And that's not even getting into industries where copy and pasting stories is
seen as a 'default'. The gaming press is very easy to 'compromise' with
photoshopped pictures and fake information, since everyone basically just
takes their news from everyone else.

So yeah, not a social media or average Joe exclusive issue here. But one which
affects the media itself.

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justifier
tangential to this is the fact that a lot of 'news' is repackaging an original
source for each platform

John Oliver had a great segment on this:
[https://youtu.be/bq2_wSsDwkQ](https://youtu.be/bq2_wSsDwkQ)

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
AP has really increased in importance as a result of this.

