Facebook has revealed that its most popular post in the first quarter of 2021 was a link to a media story about a doctor dying after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination, which was especially popular with vaccine skeptics.
Critics have claimed that Facebook shelved the report believing it would make their platform “look bad” amid criticisms that the site has been used to proliferate misinformation about the pandemic and other topics.
In an effort to appear more transparent, Facebook has begun releasing a Widely Viewed Content report for each quarter of the year allowing users to see what was the most popularly viewed content during that period.
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Yet the “inaugural report” was for the second quarter of 2021, which showed quite inane and rather “clickbaity” content topping the list of most views, including a challenge for over-30s to post a selfie of themselves and a wordsearch where the first three words you see apparently describe your “reality”. The emphasis by Facebook was that despite what many may believe, politicalised content or misinformation wasn’t at prevalent as we may have thought.
Yet a story from The New York Times revealed that the first quarter report, which had been shelved by Facebook, showed that the most widely viewed post in the first quarter was a post about a doctor who had passed away shortly after taking the COVID-19 vaccine, which was inevitably shared widely by vaccine skeptics and conspiracy theory circles.
That media story was later updated to highlight that no connection between the doctor’s death and the vaccination had been established by the medical examiner. But Facebook’s critics have claimed Facebook shelved the report due to fears it would not reflect well on their site and because it seems to contradict the summary of their Q2 report.
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Facebook said the delay in the report – which they later released to the public following the New York Times story – was because they needed to fix “key issues”.
Facebook plans on releasing quarterly reports going forward that will give users and analysts insights into what sort of content is most popularly disseminated and viewed across the most popular social network on the Internet.
Though it seems these regular reports haven’t gotten off to the best start if Facebook want people to believe and trust the information contained within them.