Editor’s note: Pacific NW magazine’s weekly Backstory provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the writer’s process or an extra tidbit that accompanies our cover story. This week’s cover tells the stories of Seattle-area people who learned some costly lessons from a variety of scams.
NOBODY LOSES ANY money in this scam. It’s really a hoax that just keeps recycling on Facebook.
Years ago, I’m thinking, a high schooler with expertise in coding decided to prank Facebook Nation and came up with the algorithm hoax. How it has flourished.
In writing my story on scams, I profiled individuals who truly had been hit hard, like $100,000 worth, plus the costly emotional damage.
This isn’t about those vile scams. This hoax just makes us look foolish. I’ve seen people who should know better fall for it. I mean, some of these folks are in professions with a lot of responsibility, and they couldn’t even do minimal due diligence?
Like going on snopes.com, the fact-checking website, and using the search feature? Search: “Facebook and bypassing algorithm.”
Advertising
Claim: “The act of copying and pasting a block of text into a new Facebook post can ‘bypass the system’ that limits the number of friends’ posts that appear in your News Feed.”
Supposedly, a Facebook algorithm limits your feed to the same 25 or 26 people.
But!
“Hold your finger down anywhere in this post, and ‘copy’ will pop up. Click ‘copy.’ Then go to your page, start a new post and put your finger...
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