Facebook released a transparency report on the first quarter 2021.
Despite promises of transparency, the company withheld its original report.
According to the report, some of the most popular content on the platform was influenced by Right-wing views and misinformation.
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After being criticized for its transparency and inability to release information, Facebook released an unpublished report on the most-viewed content it has published in the US.
The report lists the most popular pages and posts viewed by Facebook users between January and March 2021. It was first obtained by the New York Times and verified Saturday by them. According to the company, it provides a "more comprehensive picture of what people see on Facebook." The data was compiled by Facebook's own engagement tracking service, CrowdTangle.
The report's most popular link was to a South Florida Sun Sentinel article republished by Chicago Tribune. Its headline suggested that there was a link between the COVID-19 vaccination and the death of a Florida doctor. Facebook users viewed the story over 53 million times. The Epoch Times, a right-wing conspiracy newspaper publication that drew in more than 81 million pageviews, is one of Facebook's most viewed pages.
After several executives felt it was bad for Facebook, the New York Times reported that the company withheld this report. The New York Times cited an internal company email.
Facebook published a similar report last week showing data for the second half of 2021. This was in an attempt to be more transparent. The report last week boasted large viewership for less innocuous content like meme pages and cat GIFs.
"On the question about the unreleased Report from earlier this Year and why we held it. "We ended up holding it because we had key fixes to our system that we wanted to make," Andy Stone (Facebook's policy communications manager) said in a Saturday tweet thread.
Insider was unable to reach Stone or Facebook to discuss the system.
Politicians, health professionals, regulators, as well as many Facebook users have criticized Facebook for failing to do enough to stop misinformation spreading on topics such election conspiracy theories and false narratives regarding the COVID-19 vaccines. As COVID cases continue to increase around the globe, Facebook has not been forthcoming about its plans for monitoring content. Biden claimed that Facebook was "killing people" for not taking action against coronavirus misinformation, a statement he later changed.
These quarterly reports were released by the social media giant along with Kevin Roose, a New York Times journalist. He also has a Twitter account called "Facebook’s Top 10", which uses Facebook's CrowdTangle data. This data shows that Facebook amplifies Right-wing voices to Facebook's dismay.
