Facebook’s Most Widely Viewed Links Dominated By Spam
The most popular posts for the second half of 2021 were revealed in Meta‘s most recent frequently seen content report.
Furthermore, the report provides information on the most shared material, a list of the most popular domains, and the most visited links, pages, and posts by users in the United States.
Meta is implementing a new system for reporting the most popular articles.
Meta selected to show findings from both the old and new methodologies in this report.
*Meta generated the widely viewed content report using the top metrics “content views” and “viewers.”
One of the most significant modifications is the modified criterion for links featured in the popular links report. In order to be deemed a seen link, a link must now create a preview.
Read More: Meta Lists 6 Culture Codes for Advertisers
Widely Viewed Links
According to Facebook, the most popular links highlighted Facebook users’ diverse interests in themes such as humor, culture, and do-it-yourself projects.
However, according to the report’s new methodology, 30 percent of the top 20 most commonly seen links were produced through inauthentic conduct and spam.
When people misrepresent themselves or artificially promote their content using strategies such as several Facebook profiles, they are engaging in inauthentic conduct.
The top two most popular links, with a total of 59.3 million views, come from the same domain.
In fact, the same domains were responsible for 30 percent of the top links blacklisted for inauthentic conduct.
Before Facebook intervened and removed them, 30 percent of the inauthentic activity links had 112.2 million views.
Screenshot Of Top Two Most Widely Viewed Links
The non-spam top twenty list consists of:
- Private YouTube Video
- YouTube Video – Political
- TMZ Article About Bob Saget
- Dot Gov Covid Test Page
- TikTok
- NBC News Article
- BBC News article
- USPS Covid Test Site
- Fox News Detroit Dog Rescue Article
- HuffPost Superbowl Halftime Article
- Offline Parked Domain (ranked #15 with 12.3 million views)
- ComicBook.com article
- BuzzFeedNews article
- ScreenRant article
Most Popular Posts
Meta also released data on the most popular posts.
- 85.3 percent of views were generated by posts shared by people’s friends, Groups they had joined, or Pages they had followed.
- 49.1% of posts come from friends and people you’ve followed.
- Posts from joined groups account for 20.5 percent of all posts.
- 11.7 percent of posts are from unrelated posts.
- Other 3 percent
Most Widely Viewed Posts
The remainder of the most popular pieces had a similar trainwreck level of material.
Facebook Transparency Report
If only one site succeeded to reach the top twenty most commonly seen links, the most important point could be that Facebook is growing better at filtering spam sites.
Or it’s possible that this one site was exceptionally skilled at impersonating competitors.
It would be fascinating if Meta shared the top 100 most popular links in the future so that a more complete picture of what’s going on at Facebook could be seen.
Top 20 lists like the ones Meta shared give only a partial view and as such, seems to be only partially transparent.
Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook
