A 119-Word Local Crime Brief Became Facebook’s Most-Shared Story of 2019

One of the critiques of Facebook as a news source has long been that its algorithm tends to circulate stories with provocative headlines, regardless of whether the content is reliable. In 2018, Facebook announced a set of major algorithm changes designed to prioritize news from “trusted” and “local” sources, and to boost content shared by users’ friends and family over content published by professional Facebook pages. According to CrowdTangle data provided by Facebook, Savage’s story on the suspected child predator racked up more than 50,000 shares on the original US 105 FM post alone—even though the station’s Facebook page has only about 7,000 followers.

Source: slate.com