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It was a beautiful love story. A woodworker named Terry gave his girlfriend, Ana, a special necklace that he crafted himself. More than a year after Ana started wearing the necklace, the pair visited Smoo Cave in the Scottish Highlands, and it was at this moment in November 2016 that Terry revealed to Ana an engagement ring was hidden in a compartment in the necklace. As Terry proposed to her, Ana knew he had been planning to go down on one knee all along. She said yes. This was a true story that involved real people named Terry and Ana: an engagement ring really was hidden inside a necklace that Ana wore for more than a year. (The pair's last names did not appear in news stories after they requested them to be omitted because of media attention.) Unfortunately, in late 2020 the tale was seized upon by viral content websites such as FactAhead.com. The website's creators published a 43-page slideshow which forced readers to click next page more than 42 times to read the whole story. The site not only twisted the truth behind the couple's tale but also spent money to advertise the misleading article online in late 2020 and early 2021. The ads were hosted by the Taboola advertising platform, which we observed appearing on numerous websites: The strategy behind making a single story take 43 pages to read through is known as advertising arbitrage. The idea is to bring in more money through ads displayed on each of the 43 pages than it cost to run the initial advertisement that lured readers to the article in the first place. The misleading version of the story claimed that Ana wore the necklace for two years before Terry showed her what was inside of it, but Ana only wore the necklace for a bit more than a year before the big reveal. Viral-content websites also made baseless claims about the couple's finances, as well as about Ana's purportedly having a fear of flying. One page of the slideshow story identified a photograph as showing one of Ana's friends (Below a photo of Ana's friend Sofia), but the picture was merely a stock photograph. The truthful story about Terry and Ana was covered by credible news organizations in 2017. The BBC, for example, reported the following about the materials Terry used to create the necklace: ABC News also reported that Ana wore the necklace for more than a year: The Hidden inside the Necklace YouTube video created by Terry and Ana has been viewed more than 5 million times: https://youtu.be/eWZx4BmEsXMIn December 2020, Terry himself addressed the misleading version promoted by viral content websites: The couple also said that the websites really really stretched the truth, and flat out made up some stuff. Despite BBC, ABC News, and other news organizations' publishing the woman's name as Anna, we confirmed it was spelled Ana, not Anna. Also, BBC reported that the proposal took place in November 2016, while ABC News published that it occurred in April 2017. In fact, the video about the event was uploaded to YouTube in April 2017, but the proposal had happened months earlier, in November 2016. This dating was confirmed by People.com, who assigned a reporter to speak with the couple. Additional tidbits about the story could be found in the comments for the YouTube video. For example, Terry said he made Ana another necklace since he wasn't able to properly put the original one back together. He also noted that the new one was empty. Terry observed that he was paranoid about Ana's learning of the hidden engagement ring compartment in the original necklace. He was so afraid she'd find out about his plan that he didn't take a picture of that part of the process while he was creating the necklace: One YouTuber commented that That necklace is really ugly tho, to which Ana replied, Perhaps not everyone's taste, but he made it especially for me and I absolutely loved it :). Editor's Note: If Terry and Ana would like to correct any part of this story or to add anything, please contact us.
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