Last year, Mic’s fledgling tech and science vertical The Future is Now posted the same flat Earther explainer, titled “There is a Massive Conspiracy to Hide the Fact That the Earth is Flat,” twice in the same month, for a total of over 1,000 shares, at a time when that page was averaging closer to 30 shares per post. CNET’s “This is what flat-earthers on social media really believe” was about 16 times as popular as the average post on that page. Unsurprisingly, flat Earth conspiracy articles far outperform the average for these pages: LiveScience’s “Is Earth Flat? A Guide to the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory” received about 11 times the Facebook engagement (likes, comments, and shares) as the average LiveScience post. The interface is simple, and shows how many likes, comments, and shares each post gets above or below that page’s usual number. Using CrowdTangle, we can comb through months of posts on the Facebook pages for major science and news outlets. “People see all the traffic to be had, and look for the next thing trickling up from Reddit,” she says. It’s common practice to use a tool that lets newsrooms make lists of their competitors and monitor the popularity of their posts (on services like CrowdTangle, for example) to see what’s doing well for other outlets, and what might be a sure traffic bet if they could find a fresh angle or a reason to weigh in. “Newsrooms watch each other’s highest-performing stories,” Havlak says.

or Kyrie Irving) or a major news event (e.g., a presidential election), it can also get a boost into the Top Stories slot on Google News. And, if the post is coming from a generally reputable outlet or involves a celebrity (e.g., B.o.B. When a reporter writes an explainer of a new oddball conspiracy theory, the sharing and hate commenting that drove the theory to the top of Reddit reoccurs on Facebook.

Here’s how it works: conspiracy theories get people fired up enough to comment promiscuously, bringing them to the front of Reddit where journalists see them, says The Verge’s editorial director Helen Havlak. Digital newsrooms churn out coverage of flat Earth truthers using tools that make it easy to find stories bubbling up from the depths of Reddit.

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