Pop up spikes on benches in Wrexham? Are you one of *those* Facebookers?!

Facebook is changing how you see things in an attempt to clean up the drivel on there. If you don’t take action you will miss relevant and true posts from Wrexham.com and other publishers, but we are not convinced that will stop idiotic things being shared.

Last night one Facebooker published a post stating that spikes had been installed on park benches in Wrexham to ‘prevent homeless people sleeping on them allegedly’.

The post reads: “It is sad the lengths some councils will go to to make money. Look at what has been installed in Wrexham parks this afternoon.

“Could not believe it. Pay to sit down. £1 for 10 mins then you have to move on. It is to prevent homeless people sleeping on them allegedly”, along with several pictures including the top image, adding he had seen them earlier as they had just been installed.

Within hours the post was shared several hundred times over a thousand times before midnight, with a likely viewership of thousands of or even tens of thousands of local people.

Ste Croll said: “What an absolute waste of tax payers 💷 😡 no chance are they ever going to get that back in people sitting on the bench.”

Sue Parbery said it was “disgusting. Its almost barbaric.”

Those who shared it included Jessica Wright who said: “This is disgusting!! I can’t believe this. What harm are they doing sleeping on them, if your not going to help them into accommodation then at least let them have somewhere a ‘little’ more comfortable and off the floor to sleep! This is so sad!”

Kathrine Williams said: “Scooping to a all time low Wrexham county council with charging to park at local country parks and now charging to sit on benches.”

Clare Jones said: “Bloody outrageous!!! So let’s keep them in shop doorways then shall we!! And what if it’s a child sitting there waiting for its parent to get the stubborn sibling off the swings and doesn’t realise those spikes are going to appear!”

There are many, many more comments such as these.

The only problem is that it is not true, and very easy to verify with a simple search if people can be bothered. It has also been confirmed not to be true with Lead Member for Environment and Transport, Cllr David A Bithell stating its ‘absolutely not true’ and that it is a ‘big wind up’

Whether intention was a joke or not, this has been lost by the 1000+ shares and many more comments who will only see the initial post and weigh in based off that.

You can see the nine year old video, created by a design student, below:

PAY & SIT: the private bench (HD) from Fabian Brunsing on Vimeo.

Facebook are changing the way their site runs to try and combat ‘fake news’. Previously everything you ‘liked’ was shown to you, that was then diluted down and you only got to see stuff if Facebook thought it could be interesting.

In simple terms this meant brands, publishers, businesses and the like had to get the comments and interactions to get their comment infront of more people. Viral sites, clickbait and deliberate mistakes have become part of the social media armoury to get that to happen.

The new changes are two fold, one to get more content from your friends showing, and secondly to let you rate publishers. That means unless you deliberately opt in to seeing some information first, you will not see it.

In terms of Wrexham.com that means you would probably see one in three of our articles if you liked our page, but in the future you might see the odd one if Facebook deems it as ok.

Facebook is often hammered for being a hell hole, however it is a just a platform, those who make it good or bad are the people – such as yourself perhaps – who use it.

If you do use Facebook be careful what you share, and be aware of how it works, so you understand why you are being shown things as decided by an algorithm by an american company.

Like the current fake information about the benches in the park, some posts are shared far and wide without thinking, and it would be worthwhile to challenge or even check things out yourself.

Have you taken action after the recent changes?

If you want to keep an eye on Wrexham stuff, check Wrexham.com

If you *have* to use Facebook, make sure you have clicked “Prioritize who to see first” in your newsfeed settings. If you have not changed them inside the last month then you are under the new system changes.

You can select up to 30 people or Pages to see first.

You can click the arrow by All to sort by Friends, Pages, or the people you already see first, and then can choose who or what – hopefully the Wrexham.com facebook page will be on there!

This should help you see what you want to see.