https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/20/22634841/facebook-most-viewed-content-report-look-bad

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Filed under:

  * Policy
  * Tech
  * Facebook

Facebook suppressed report that made it look bad

New, 4 comments

The New York Times obtained a draft of a report that was in the works
about the first quarter of 2021

By Jay Peters@jaypeters Aug 20, 2021, 7:22pm EDT

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[acastro_18] Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Wednesday, Facebook released a report about what content was most
viewed by people in the US last quarter. It was the first time it had
released such a report. But according to The New York Times, Facebook
was working on a similar report for the first quarter of 2021 that it
opted not to share because it might have reflected poorly on the
company.

The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the report, says that
the most-viewed link in the first quarter had a headline that could
promote COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, which has been an issue on the
social media platform. The headline read, "A 'healthy' doctor died
two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating
why." The article was published by The South Florida Sun Sentinel and
republished by The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times says.

`Executives feared it could be a public relations issue'

Facebook was working on releasing this report, but executives,
including Alex Schultz, Facebook's CMO and VP of analytics,
apparently "debated whether it would cause a public relations
problem, according to the internal emails" and ultimately decided not
to publish it, The New York Times reported.

"We considered making the report public earlier but since we knew the
attention it would garner, exactly as we saw this week, there were
fixes to the system we wanted to make," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone
said in a statement. Stone also clarified Schultz's opinion on if
Facebook should release the report, saying that Schultz "advocated
for putting out the report."

It's been a busy week for Facebook. In addition to publishing the
report about the top-viewed posts, it has also had to contend with an
amended antitrust complaint filed against the company by the Federal
Trade Commission.

Related

Facebook releases a report on the most-viewed content in News Feed

FTC says Facebook has been a monopoly 'since at least 2011' in
amended antitrust complaint

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