[HN Gopher] Widely Viewed Content: What People See on Facebook
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Widely Viewed Content: What People See on Facebook
Author : minimaxir
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-08-18 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (transparency.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (transparency.fb.com)
| ashayh wrote:
| If gofundme really ranks that high, it further proves the point
| that US "healthcare" is a legalized scam.
| minikites wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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._
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| minimaxir wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nomel wrote:
| How is it possible that there are duplicates?
| saltedonion wrote:
| 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.
| samspenc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mdoms wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jdlyga wrote:
| Facebook is the most toxic social media there is right now
| ProAm wrote:
| Why? I see Twitter, Instagram and Reddit being just as bad?
| lou1306 wrote:
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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.
| hncurious wrote:
| As toxic as fb is, twitter is even worse. It just doesn't get
| as much scrutiny for whatever reason.
| brightball wrote:
| Agreed. The moment that mainstream news started showing
| tweets 10 years ago is when everything really started going
| down hill.
| mavhc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Better friends than the people the evening news decides
| to feature.
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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.
| creddit wrote:
| 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.
| wes-k wrote:
| Where is "most viewed posts" defined? How many views make a post
| land in that category?
| tpmx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Ah, seems reasonable!
| yorwba wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That appears to be the consensus:
| https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/1428053056567103488
| nonfamous wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| 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.
| mousetree wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
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(page generated 2021-08-18 23:02 UTC)