
A 119-Word Local Crime Brief Became Facebook’s Most-Shared Story of 2019 - danso
https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/facebook-most-viral-story-texas-child-predator.html
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iambateman
I wonder how much of a factor randomness was...

It’s the social media equivalent of winning the lottery...somebody is going to
win, and trying to explain why a particular post went uber-viral may by
futile.

~~~
naniwaduni
Unlike certain kinds of lottery, there's no reason to assume that "somebody is
going to win".

~~~
NikkiA
What? There has to be a 'most shared story', so something _does_ have to win,
unless you're going to get nitpicky about 2 stories that each had 49,994
shares or something.

~~~
naniwaduni
It is perfectly conceivable for no particular stories to have much nonlocal
impact, with nothing going viral. Sure, there'll be a 'most shared story', but
that doesn't need to be a _meaningful_ position.

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imgabe
I think it's just the vagueness of the headline. "Our Area" could be any area,
so everyone who saw it wanted pass it along because they thought it applied to
them.

~~~
dmckeon
Newspaper stories used to have a “dateline” which gave the place-of-origin and
the date the story was written, usually followed by the writer’s name. The AP
style guide had detailed rules, abbreviations, and even disambiguation - which
Portland, which Springfield?

Nowadays, TV and newspaper web sites frequently make no mention of the date of
a story, and the location is rarely given. Worse, the geographic area served
by the medium is often maddeningly vague, with general hints like serving “the
five valley area”, or “the gateway to the Snake Navel river,” or “the tri-
county rural-plex”.

Those are nice for the local readers and the advertisers/chamber of commerce,
but for the random remote internet reader they convey almost no useful
location information. Please, old-media web-site admins, put your medium’s
location somewhere close to the top of your home page. A state or province, a
town, or even an area-code. Also, get off my lawn.

~~~
ComputerGuru
> Newspaper stories used to have a “dateline” which gave the place-of-origin
> and the date the story was written, usually followed by the writer’s name.

Actually, the dateline is _far_ more important than that. I didn't always know
this, but the dateline is actually a contract telling you where the _reporter_
was _in person_ , and is the difference between the "hard" journalism of
yesteryear and the "soft" web journalism of today.

Read this investigation [0] by the NY Times into the story of Jayson Blair,
whom they fired after discovering he was faking sources for his articles. It
talks a lot about journalistic integrity and was the first time I learned that
datelines weren't just where the article happened but also the journalist
giving you their word that they were there, on the ground.

Once you learn this, you start to see it everywhere. For instance, a recent
article about the deep freeze we had here in Chicago (we hit around minus 50
degrees F with windchill for a couple of days) talked almost exclusively about
Chicago, a little bit about the Midwest in general, and a single sentence
towards the end about Michigan. The byline? Detroit, MI. Now you know why!

[0]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/national/times-
reporter-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/national/times-reporter-who-
resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html)

~~~
contras1970
> _around minus 50 degrees F_

== around -45.56C
([https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-50+F+in+C](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-50+F+in+C))

------
chapium
OT: I think it's interesting that to illustrate viral sharing on facebook a
share button is surrounded by a hundred mouse pointers. Will the mouse pointer
be the next floppy disk save icon? Considering how much of facebook comes from
touch screen users, the mouse pointers seem a bit antiquated.

~~~
HNLurker2
Great observation.

~~~
chapium
I suppose a picture with a hundred fingers might come off as a bit creepy.

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bradleybuda
TLDR: the headline was “human trafficking [...] in ‘our area’”, which when
shared virally sounds like it’s in everyone’s area.

In case you didn’t want to wade through 20 paragraphs of boilerplate about
social news sharing before getting to the obvious punchline.

~~~
danso
The story brings up other possible factors too, such as the nature of the
engagement and the types of users (individual, as opposed to publishers) who
were re-sharing it. Sensational headline alone isn't an end-all explanation
for why a brief from a radio station w/ 7,000 followers would go viral.

~~~
mywittyname
John Mulaney has a skit in his I'm New In Town special that I think sums this
phenomenon up.

> there’s a hierarchy in the New York Post [...] different people that they
> don’t like. [...]And if you pay attention, you can start to identify some of
> the rankings that they have.

> [...]Um, the number one thing that you can be in the eyes of the New York
> Post is an angel. An angel is a child who has died. That is the best thing
> that you can be in the eyes of the New York Post.

> [...]Down towards the bottom of the spectrum, there are pervs. Pervs touch
> tots

People are drawn to news about "bad guys" and for some reason, sexual
predators seem to be the most compelling kid of bad guy. Which likely also
explains their popularity in crime drama plots.

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kevinwang
Can anyone link to the original fb post? I'd love to see what caption people
used when sharing it.

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kartan
"By clicking “Agree,” you consent to Slate’s Terms of Service and Privacy
Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners
to deliver relevant advertising on our site, in emails and across the
Internet, to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our
Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and
how to withdraw consent."

No thank you.

~~~
mirimir
That one didn't bother me as much as Oath's, which includes:

> ... We (Oath) and our partners need your consent to access your device, set
> cookies, and use your data, including your location, to understand your
> interests, provide relevant ads and measure their effectiveness. ...

I mean "access your device" and "including your location"? But maybe they're
just being more honest about it all than Slate is.

~~~
jfk13
Well, if you actually read Slate's "privacy policy", it's pretty horrific too.
It lists vast amounts of data they collect, both personal and (what they
consider to be) non-personal (which can include your geolocation and browser
fingerprint, apparently), and lots of ways they use it and share it; but it's
not at all clear how I'd be able to opt out of having them track me, share my
history with all their favourite partners, etc.

There's no way simply reading an article creates a "legitimate need" for all
that.

~~~
mirimir
Yeah, I should have expected that :(

> ... but it's not at all clear how I'd be able to opt out of having them
> track me, share my history with all their favourite partners, etc.

Actually, Slate seems quite accessible via Tor. So that's an option. But I
don't use HN via Tor, so switching to a Whonix VM just to read stuff, with no
shared clipboard, would be painful. And as well, I don't like creating
correlations, so I wouldn't want to use a Whonix VM that I used for actual
work.

> There's no way simply reading an article creates a "legitimate need" for all
> that.

I totally agree.

