
News feed app enlists giant readership to locate missing loved ones
China’s Toutiao harnesses the power of the crowd to appeal for information on lost persons
Toutiao is best known for giving people their daily fix of clickbait. But China’s most popular news app is increasingly becoming useful for something else: Finding missing people.

Here’s how it works: Friends and family fill out an online form, providing a photo and other details of a missing person. Toutiao then sends an alert to users of the app located within 6 miles of where the person was last seen.
In one recent case, a mentally ill man was separated from his brother at a railway station during the Lunar New Year travel rush. He was found three days later in a hospital, after a member of staff saw a missing person notice from Toutiao.
But this is a much-needed service in the world’s most populous country: About half a million elderly Chinese people go missing every year.
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