social media

Nearly 5.3 million people liked, shared or responded to Dutch 'pulp news' on Facebook at least once, according to a study by Leiden University that was published on Thursday. The researchers consider pulp news to be commercially driven reports that look like news items. According to the researchers, the term 'fake news' is too politically charged, NU.nl reports.

Police officers were present at five secondary school locations in Culemborg on Monday morning after a video showing a firearm appeared on social media. The video may be linked to one of the schools, according to the police. "We'd rather be safe than sorry", the police said, according to NU.nl.

The police are "constantly monitoring" the situation, but stress that there is no reason to assume that there is an actual threat. Lessons at the schools continued as usual.

Several citizens alerted the police to the video on Sunday. Who posted the video is not yet clear. 

There will be no so-called Project X party in Katwijk, Mayor Wim Hillenaar of Cuijk, which covers Katwijk, announced. Measures will be taken to prevent any irregularities. On social media, thousands of young people said they were going to the party, RTL Nieuws reports.

"Given the circumstances, we can do nothing else but prepare for all scenarios", Hillenaar said. "But there is no party in Katwijk and there will be no party in Katwijk. People from outside Cuijk who come here with bad intentions will be stopped."

A Facebook post stating that the 34 suspects in the trial around a highway blockade during the national Sinterklaas arrival last year were sentenced to prison, was massively shared on Facebook. The post on the page 'Ik Ben Zwarte Piet Fan' was shared over 25 thousand times in the 23 hours it was online. It has since been removed, NOS reports.

Russian trolls are trying to influence Dutch discussions on social media with fake accounts, De Groene Amsterdammer reports based on its own research. These trolls show support for anti-Islam party PVV and spread pro-Russian information when it comes to the MH17 disaster, according to the weekly newspaper.

People in the Netherlands are not very concerned about fake news and don't come across it very often. The Dutch also have a relatively high trust in their news media, according to the digital news report by Reuters and the University of Oxford. 

According to the researchers, the Netherlands is "characterized by relatively high levels of trust in news and little concern about fake news".

The Segbroek College in The Hague will hold commemoration on Saturday for 15-year-old Clay Haime, who passed away over the weekend. His family says that he died after participating in a social media challenge, AD reports.

On the Segbroek College's website, the school says that Clay died suddenly in a fatal accident, giving no further details. "Friday afternoon Clay went home cheerfully. On Friday night he had a fatal accident. He died of the consequences of this on Saturday", the school said. 

Dutch Facebook users provide a remarkably large stream of posts containing hate, racism, an wishes for someone to get a disease like cancer. The number of such posts coming from southern European countries, for example, is much lower, the Volkskrant reports based on its own research.

The newspaper based its report on an anonymous interview with a Dutch man who worked for Facebook as moderator in Berlin last year, leaked emails, internal documents, and a colleague who supported his story. A Dutch team, which varies from five to eight people, works as Facebook moderators in Berlin.

Since November there were two cases of the Dutch police removing photos or videos from their social media feeds after complaints about privacy violations, Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security said in response to parliamentary questions on the police's social media policy, NU.nl reports. 

A call to put a price on Sinterklaas's head was a joke made in a private Facebook conversation with only three participants, suspect Michael van Zeijl said on talk show De Nieuwe Maan. He also does not regret making the 'joke' in October last year, NOS reports.

Teenagers in the Netherlands are turning their backs on Facebook in favor of other social media platforms, Instagram and Snapchat in particular, according to the National Social Media Study 2018 by Newcom Research. Now only 43 percent of Dutch between the ages of 15 and 19 years use Facebook on a daily basis, compared to 68 percent in 2016, Marketingfacts.nl reports.