How Facebook Throttles Traffic Through Fact-Checking
Genesius Times satire site had a hit with the article “Greta’s global warming conference cancelled due to sub-arctic freezing temps” but admins noticed something strange whenever traffic would spike for the page. It would skyrocket and then fall precipitously soon thereafter. Most posts shoot up in traffic indicating a post in a group or a page and then gradually decrease in traffic over time. The quick declines were suspect.
Admins noticed one of the referrals, however: https://hoax-alert.leadstories.com/
This is one of the obnoxious fact-checking services for Facebook:
So it’s clear people are sharing the article but it’s quickly repressed. Either this is an automatic algorithmic degradation or it’s a real person turning on a suppress button after every popular post is unclear. It’s hard to believe they have actual humans working on this but nothing’s too much to protect against the horrors of hilarious satire.