Okay, right here we go once more with Fb’s ‘Extensively Seen Content material Report’, which exhibits the web sites, publishers and particular hyperlinks that noticed essentially the most attain throughout Fb in Q2 2022.
Meta launched its Extensively Seen Content material report final August as a part of an effort to counter to pervading narrative that Fb facilitates the amplification of divisive political content material, with political misinformation, particularly, gaining vital traction by way of Fb Information Feeds.
Fb says that’s merely not the case, and to make clear this, it launched its Extensively Seen Content material report, so as to share information on what’s truly gaining essentially the most traction within the app. Which, based on Fb, is generally jokes, memes and different innocent junk.
That may very well be problematic in itself, relying in your interpretation – and even then, the report has additionally been riddled with controversies round disclosures, misinformation, eliminated content material, spam, and extra.
Mainly, it’s not an ideal endorsement of the ‘worth’ that Fb supplies, neither is it a validation of Fb as an neutral political reflection.
So what does Fb say gained essentially the most traction within the app in Q2?
Right here’s its overview of essentially the most extensively considered hyperlinks within the app:
Oh, that’s gotta’ burn Zuck and Co. to see TikTok heading this listing.
Think about having to be the one who reported this to Zuck. I think about his response would have been one thing like:
Jokes apart, as you possibly can see, 5 of the highest 20 most shared hyperlinks within the app in Q2, reaching a cumulative 73.5 million viewers all through the interval, have since been eliminated by Meta for numerous coverage violations referring to ‘spam ways’.
That’s not nice. Meta is self-reporting that its platform is liable for junk content material, designed to mislead and dupe customers, reaching 70 million folks in a three-month interval.
However that’s not all – Meta additionally notes that its platform has been used to amplify this kind of content material prior to now too:
“In our earlier WVCR report, we shared that the ninth-most considered hyperlink on Fb with over 33 million views within the first quarter of this 12 months was alltrendytees[.]com. After the Integrity Institute had flagged it to us, we investigated and blocked this area for violating our IB coverage. Our investigation linked this area to GearLaunch, a Bangladesh-based e-commerce agency.”
So on one hand Meta’s saying that it doesn’t amplify divisive political content material as a lot as it might appear, and right here’s the proof, whereas on the opposite, it does amplify scams and garbage, a few of which is in violation of its guidelines, at a large scale.
100 million+ cumulative viewers is fairly large. Elimination appears nearly irrelevant at that time.
Thus stays the conundrum that Meta has with its Extensively Seen Content material report, with the information as soon as once more highlighting vital issues with its methods and processes, that could be simply as dangerous because the rumors that it was initially searching for to refute.
Although these points are additionally nonetheless prevalent – digging into the opposite hyperlinks listed, there’s additionally:
- A YouTube video the place a girl spouts right-wing conspiracy theories
- A Fox Information clip on YouTube about ‘Disney’s woke queer agenda’
- A Newsmax article which attributes rising petrol costs to US President Joe Biden
Appears slightly political, there – it does look like all these divisive political posts are gaining a good bit of traction on Fb (37.9 million collective Fb viewers), regardless of the corporate’s previous claims.
That looks as if an issue, proper?
Ah, however most individuals don’t truly see any of those posts, with Meta additionally reporting that:
“90.2% of the views within the US throughout Q2 2022 didn’t embrace a hyperlink to a supply exterior of Fb.”
So even when 100 million extra individuals are being scammed due to Fb, many of the issues that most individuals see within the app are positively not hyperlinks to politically divisive sources – so Fb can’t be blamed for amplifying associated conflicts, not less than based mostly on this measure.
That nearly looks as if a aspect observe, as a result of once more, hundreds of thousands of individuals are nonetheless being uncovered to not less than a few of this materials, based mostly on Meta’s personal reporting, whereas that additionally doesn’t account for the truth that many posts with out hyperlinks are nonetheless political in nature.
In different phrases, at greatest, that is an inconclusive account of not a lot particularly, which Meta is making an attempt to border as vindicating proof that it’s not the supply of evil that individuals say.
It doesn’t show that. It doesn’t actually show something, apart from the truth that lots of people are participating with quite a lot of garbage within the app.
You possibly can take a look at Meta’s ‘Extensively Seen Content material Report’ for Q2 right here.
