Why do people ask you to copy and paste a Facebook post rather than sharing it?
Why do people ask you to copy and paste a Facebook post rather than sharing it?

If you use Facebook then you will have seen these posts.

Usually they relate to something that tugs at your heart strings, or it might be political or religious.  You read the post and then see at the bottom the line “don’t share, copy and paste”.

Why?????

If you agree with the post and think others should see it, surely clicking the SHARE button is the simple option; it is what it is there for after all.

So why did your friend ask you to copy and paste and not to share?
I bet if you ask them they will say they don’t know.
I bet they simple copied and pasted it from another friend, who also didn’t know why.

There is one suggested reason people ask you to copy and paste rather than share that you can find on a few sites if you google, but it is incorrect.  It claims that Facebook reduces the prominence of posts with lots of shares – it doesn’t. So that can’t be the reason for all these “copy and paste” requests.

REASON 1 – SELF SELECTION

You are being asked to self-select yourself for something later.

When you simply share a post you like with your friends there is no way to track it further than your first share; no way to find out who else has shared it further on.

But if you copy and paste the post exactly, the potential future scammer can find you and target you.

Here is an example of how  the “copy and paste, don’t share” request works

There has been a “copy and paste” post going around recently about animal abuse. As well as the directive to “Do not share”  but instead “copy and paste” this, the post contains a key phrase with incorrectly spelt words.

A person who copies and pastes it can easily be found by searching Google with the operand  site:facebook.com “key phrase here”

The potential scammer can now see a long, long list of Facebook users who have copied and pasted the exact message about animal abuse.

Now they have a target list of people who they can be reasonably sure will react to a new post, an new “like” request, a new friend request, or some other “support us” plea that is related to animal abuse.

So you have self-selected that you are someone who cares about animal abuse and who is also perhaps a little gullible.  You are now a target for a spammer and you are likely to soon be asked for money for some supposedly related cause.

Of course, this can work for any subject.
Key phases to look out for run along these lines:

“don’t scroll without typing amen.”
“if you woke up this morning and your thankful every day while being bless scroll down and type amen”
“how many likes can she get?”
“this baby still cute, scroll if your heartless”
“ignore if your heartless”
“keep scrolling if your heartless”
“Ignore If You Have No Heart”
“PLEASE DONT IGNORE”
“Don’t scroll without saying R.I.P”
“This is so sad type AMEN and lets see how many amen’s and likes he can get”
“Don’t scroll without showing respect”
“Please don’t scroll down without saying “Amen”
“Don’t Press Watch Without Typing Amen”
“1 like = 1000 prayers Don’t scroll without typing amen”
“Would You Save Your Mother? Type Yes Ignore NO”
“Do you trust in prayers? If yes so please pray for this baby take a minute and type “Amen” your one amen is one pray if you don’t love children so you can skip this”
The “type Amen” posts are particularly prevalent at the moment, so avoid those and, if you do happen to be religious, say a little prayer to yourself asking God to help whoever the subject of the post is (they may actually be real and if they aren’t God will know) and also pray for the scammer that they might find a better cause – then move on.  God doesn’t need you to type anything.

REASON 2 – SPREADING HOAXES

Another reason for the “copy and past, don’t share” request is that by copying and pasting a message, you are creating another instance of the message that is not dependant on the original.

(Credit http://www.thatsnonsense.com/hoax-posts-ask-copy-paste/)

If 5000 people share a hoax or fake news message by clicking Share, and for some reason that original message was removed (for example, deleted by Facebook for being fake!) then all those 5000 “shares” will vanish, at the click of a mouse. If the original post being shared is removed, so does all of its shares.

The same doesn’t apply if you copy and paste a message, then post it. If 5000 people copy and paste a message to their own timeline, and the original gets removed, you still have 4999 instances of the message remaining on Facebook, since they are all separate posts, independent of each other.

Another reason, of course, is that it makes it harder to track down the person who started a hoax, since we’re all passing along a message in a digital game of Chinese Whispers, and the privacy settings of many users often makes it nigh impossible to track the original creator of a particular message.

This is a small tactic often employed by hoaxers to help their posts remain on Facebook for as long as possible, and is most often the reason hoaxers prefer copying and pasting, as opposed to sharing.

In summary – don’t copy and paste posts on Facebook; share them.

If you feel strongly about a post, simply share it.
But always also remember to check if it is actually true first.
As a minimum, start by running it past Snopes.

Here is a wonderful guide to Facebook hoaxes and the perils of copy and paste requests with many examples of past hoaxes and the reasons they were created.