The local crime story that went viral: Chips with Everything podcast

Chips with Everything Series

Jordan Erica Webber looks at a local crime brief that defied Facebook’s 2018 algorithm change, one that promised to transform users’ news feeds.

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In March 2019, journalist Will Oremus was reading through a report on Facebook’s latest publishing trends. One aspect of the study caught his eye.

A 119-word, local crime brief was the most shared news story on all of English-language Facebook in the first three months of 2019.

This couldn’t be. In January 2018, Facebook announced some major adjustments to its algorithms, which would change what users saw on their news feeds. They wanted to prioritise content from friends and family, reduce public content from businesses, brands, and media, and ensure that what public content people did see would – as Mark Zuckerberg said – “encourage meaningful interactions between people”.

So, did this story defy this news feed algorithm? Did the algorithm fail? Or did the post do exactly what it was supposed to? Jordan Erica Webber chats to Oremus about the now viral Facebook post. Then she chats to the author behind the original NewsWhip Facebook report – Benedict Nicholson.

Close up picture of a person using an iPad
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
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