The New York Times reported Friday that Facebook withheld its Q1 report on popular content out of fear of backlash.
Facebook published the report on Saturday. It stated that the COVID-19 vaccine was doubted by the most popular post on Facebook.
Facebook spokesperson stated that the article "illustrates just how difficult it can be to define misinformation."
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According to a Saturday report by Facebook, the top performing link on Facebook in the US between January and March suggested that the COVID-19 vaccination could prove fatal. The report was released by the social media giant Saturday. It identified the most popular content from January through March.
Facebook's misinformation regarding COVID-19 has drawn increased scrutiny. President Joe Biden stated earlier this year that Facebook was "killing people." (He later removed the comments.
Facebook published a report earlier this week that identified the most popular content between April and June. This raised questions about why the data wasn't released for the first quarter. The Q2 report's top performing links were mostly harmless content such as recipes and sports.
The New York Times reported that the Q1 report was deliberately withheld by senior executives to avoid backlash.
Continue reading: This startup collaborates with Google and Facebook to prevent internet users from being misinformed. Take a look at the pitch deck that it used to secure $7 million from VCs.
The Q1 report was released the same day as The Times report. It showed that the most popular URL on Facebook came from an article published in the Sun-Sentinel, and distributed by The Chicago Tribune. According to the headline, the COVID-19 vaccine could have led to the death of a Florida doctor two weeks after he was vaccinated.
Later, a medical examiner's report found that there wasn't enough evidence to prove that the vaccine was responsible for his death. An update was made to the story.
The article was seen by more than 53 million people in their newsfeed. The report said that The Epoch Times was the 19th most visited page on the platform during the first three months in 2021. This right-wing anti-China newspaper has promoted conspiracy theories.
Facebook directed Insider to an internal Twitter thread that was shared by Andy Stone, a spokesperson for the company, when Insider reached them by email. Stone stated that the article about the Florida doctor was factually correct and "exemplifies how difficult it can be to define misinformation."
Stone stated that Facebook initially withheld Q1 reports "because there were important fixes to the system which we wanted to make," although it was not clear what those fixes were.
He said, "We are guilty of cleaning up our home a little before we invited guests."
According to the report, the top 20 most visited links on Facebook account for only 0.077% of all content views. Facebook hosts over 2.8 billion users monthly.
Facebook stated that it will continue to release quarterly reports on the most popular content on its platform as part of its transparency efforts.
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