Widely Viewed Content: What People See on Facebook

minimaxir 2021-08-18 17:35:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Metacontext: the existence of this report is likely presented as a counter to the @FacebooksTop10 (https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10) Twitter account which lists the top posts daily by total interactions. The "content views" metric Facebook used here is not surfaced by Crowdtangle (the data source used for that account)

Granted, this transparency report is also damning of the typical content on Facebook, but in a different way.

EDIT: Twitter thread from the reporter who manages that Twitter account: https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1428059945090519043

Jonanin 2021-08-18 19:35:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> this transparency report is also damning of the typical content on Facebook, but in a different way.

And in what way is that, exactly? I’m not seeing what you’re seeing apparently. It looks fairly benign.

eightysixfour 2021-08-18 20:15:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think OPs argument is that the content is low quality, which is damning, but not in the same way as it would be if the top content was political or "disinformation." Benign garbage is still garbage, but we should not really expect anything else.

Jonanin 2021-08-19 02:51:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

why is “benign garbage” (in your completely subjective opinion) “damning”? That implies a certain level of intentional wrongdoing on behalf of FB. What did you expect the typical online social content to look like?

eightysixfour 2021-08-19 16:47:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes, it is my subjective opinion that "typical online social content" is benign garbage and I think this report from Facebook is "damning" evidence supporting that opinion. I'm not naive enough to believe that giant social networks will produce anything else, but I don't think that's an excuse that keeps us from being critical of the networks or the content on them.

saltedonion 2021-08-18 18:56:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Last time this was discussed here one of news reports mentioned internally executives pushed for this style of report to be released so they can massage the metrics how ever they like and own the narrative.

nomel 2021-08-18 21:23:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

How is it possible that there are duplicates?

tpmx 2021-08-18 18:23:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This is insultingly low-grade BS. Of course the top 20 domains are going to be mainstream; it's a simple numbers game - there are few mainstream domains and they each have relatively high traffic.

A more correct view would have been sample-based. Sample a random number of interactions and analyze and categorize the targets. This will catch all of the spammy, shady and sometimes even purposefully opionion-bending things posted under thousands of separate domains, etc.

For reference: The long tail article from 2004: https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/

bcherny 2021-08-18 19:42:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What would you be trying to learn from the sample? A small sample would not be representative of what people see; a large sample would give the same results as the report.

tpmx 2021-08-18 19:56:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think you missed the "and analyze and categorize the targets. This will catch all of the spammy, shady and sometimes even purposefully opionion-bending things posted under thousands of separate domains, etc." part.

bcherny 2021-08-18 20:16:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Ah, seems reasonable!

mousetree 2021-08-18 17:30:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Any ideas why https://www.playeralumniresources.com/ is the most viewed link? I'm not from the US so I have no extra context to why a football fan club page (?) is the most viewed.

minimaxir 2021-08-18 17:38:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

All of the Chris Jacke megaviral posts appear to include it, e.g. https://www.facebook.com/chris.jacke.13/posts/28836974685464...

It's worth noting that type of post falls under engagement bait which is supposedly penalized. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/259911614709806?id=20...

Sommer 2021-08-18 22:02:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yeah this doesn't add up - most viewed appears to mean most number of times people viewed the text of that link, not the page itself or its content. Their own sharing debugger tool shows that url only has 837 total engagements (on 87.2M views?) https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=https%3A%2F%2...

ashayh 2021-08-18 19:34:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If gofundme really ranks that high, it further proves the point that US "healthcare" is a legalized scam.

minikites 2021-08-18 19:58:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's incredibly shameful that anyone living in the wealthiest nation in the world needs to set up a donation drive for necessary medical care.

commandlinefan 2021-08-18 20:24:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Isn't the party line of the government-funded healthcare types "I don't mind paying for somebody else's healthcare"? This is a great chance for them to demonstrate that voluntary collectivism works.

ceejayoz 2021-08-18 20:49:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You're conflating two different things.

Universal healthcare is proposed because stuff like GoFundMe isn't a sensible, effective, or equitable approach to funding medical costs.

Proof that it works is already readily available, in Europe, Japan, Australia, etc., across a variety of different delivery methods.

pessimizer 2021-08-18 20:59:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

US taxpayers already pay for someone else's healthcare. That's the effect of a government that only pays for 1/3 of healthcare that costs 3x as much - that the US government currently spends as much on healthcare as socialized systems do.

quickthrowman 2021-08-18 23:43:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I present to you this comprehensive list of developed/industrialized countries without universal health care: The United States of America,

wes-k 2021-08-18 19:46:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Where is "most viewed posts" defined? How many views make a post land in that category?

yorwba 2021-08-18 18:11:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The third-most viewed post with 61.2 million views was https://facebook.com/4131728466877366 but

This Facebook post is no longer available. It may have been removed or the privacy settings of the post may have changed.

So I got curious. Judging from the Google search results, the title used to be "Your Porn Name is your middle name & the 1st car you had." Social engineering for "security" questions?

minimaxir 2021-08-18 18:16:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That appears to be the consensus: https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/1428053056567103488

nonfamous 2021-08-18 22:58:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Which immediately suggests the question, who removed the post? I'm guessing Facebook, and they conveniently omitted that fact from the report, lest it be known that content like this was in the top 20.

2021-08-18 20:09:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

samspenc 2021-08-18 21:04:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Never heard about the linktr.ee service before seeing it listed here, but it looks like a one-stop shop for creating a landing page which supports donations. I'm guessing that social influencers are using this a lot?

bellyfullofbac 2021-08-18 21:52:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Do they do donations now?

Since Instagram doesn't allow clickable URL unless your account meets some sort of requirements (something like number of followers, and you have to turn it into a business account or something) but it allows adding one URL under your profile name for e.g. your Twitter/homepage, people use linktr.ee to have a page with many links.

I made an account once, but their upsell-emails annoyed me that I deleted it after a day.

Infinitesimus 2021-08-19 02:45:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yep. Fwiw there's a similar recent YC company trying to solve the same problem:

https://beacons.ai/

(I'm not affiliated)

Seems like the natural progression. Silloed products store slices of user information (shops, media, text, etc.) And these products help unbundle and change the relationships so users have their own landing pages and can link to multiple sites they make money from. I'd bet in 5 years, there'll be a new company that scrapes data from beacons and linktree to offer search functionality across users...

mdoms 2021-08-18 18:54:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's surprising to me that the highest viewed content on Facebook "only" garners around 50 million views. I know Facebook content is more ephemeral, but for comparison the highest viewed Youtube videos are in the multiple billions of views.

2021-08-18 20:18:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

jdlyga 2021-08-18 18:03:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Facebook is the most toxic social media there is right now

hncurious 2021-08-18 18:26:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As toxic as fb is, twitter is even worse. It just doesn't get as much scrutiny for whatever reason.

creddit 2021-08-18 18:56:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Twitter is where members of the media are given special status (blue checks) and they generally use it as a tool for self promotion.

Facebook has gained huge shares of advertising revenue once owned by said members of the media.

brightball 2021-08-18 19:58:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Agreed. The moment that mainstream news started showing tweets 10 years ago is when everything really started going down hill.

mavhc 2021-08-18 22:00:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

So what's actually worse is tv news people who can't even be bothered to go downstairs to interview the human on the street.

My twitter and facebook are full of interesting things, guess I have better friends than you

brightball 2021-08-18 23:00:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Better friends than the people the evening news decides to feature.

ravenstine 2021-08-18 18:36:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Twitter is worse, and I would argue that Instagram is also worse in terms of sheer narcissism. And what does that narcissism contribute to the world? Nothing. In fact, it detracts. At least narcissists that run corporations have the excuse that they create jobs. Instagram knows exactly what they are doing.

Yes, I know that it's the same company. I'm talking strictly about the platforms. Facebook at least has some useful features like marketplace. In its current state it has less vitriol and narcissism than the other major platforms. But a lot of that is due to its age and the bad press it got.

ProAm 2021-08-18 18:05:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Why? I see Twitter, Instagram and Reddit being just as bad?

renewiltord 2021-08-18 18:19:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Personally, as a HN user, I find that HN users are smart, handsome, and charismatic in a way that smelly users of Twitter and Facebook are not. Also, we are very self aware and intelligent. Very intelligent. This is why the elections can be manipulated by Facebook but here on HN we are wise and intelligent and not fooled. We are intelligent here. On HN.

lou1306 2021-08-18 18:35:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think FB's sheer reach and the way the friendlist of a user closely resembles its real-world social graph (for typical users, at least) puts it in a league of its own.

standardUser 2021-08-18 18:12:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Most of what I see these days is data mining questions with a hint of Boomer humor. There's several examples in the article near the bottom.