Facebook's widely-viewed content report last week was widely criticized for obscuring more than it actually revealed. Its attempt to show that users don't see divisive news stories often in their feeds was widely criticized for not providing a high-level view. YouTube.com is the most shared domain on Facebook. That's great, thank you.
In recent days, however, I have spent more time looking at what data Facebook actually shared. While it is true that the report doesn't provide much information about hot-button topics like vaccine hesitancy and the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, it does reveal something quite alarming: nearly all of the top-viewed Facebook posts over the last quarter were actually plagiarized from other sources. Some of the same audience-building strategies that allowed Russian interference on Facebook to thrive in 2016 are still effective.
Today I will be looking at two aspects of this data. To find out where the posts came from, let's first look at the top-viewed Facebook posts over the last quarter. We can also look at the most popular link on Facebook, which could be a thread about US military veterans.
It is difficult to find a great idea for a viral post on social media. This is why Facebook's most popular pages have spent the past quarter copying their ideas.
Facebook's report lists the 20 most popular posts over the last three months. One of these posts was deleted by Facebook before it was published. Only four of the 19 remaining posts appear to be original. The remaining 15 were published at least once in another place and then uploaded to Facebook with minor changes.
The No. The No. 1 post in this report is a meme by Gaur Gopal Das, motivational speaker and author. It's a mess of letters and words beneath the message. 80.6 million people have viewed it so far.
Das was not the first to use it. M.anifest, a Ghanaian rapper, had posted the meme to Twitter two weeks before. It is possible that the meme was not M.anifest's original. The image he posted seems distressed and as though it has been copied many times. However, his tweet is the first instance of the meme that I could find using Google's reverse-image search.
Copying other people's ideas is the best way to be successful on Facebook
What about number 2. 2. Ace Gutta, a musician posted an April image that read "Im old but I look young challenge." Drop a photo 30 and over, along with a link on his Instagram. It was seen by more than 61 million people, with 5 million responding. According to my search, I found that other people had issued this challenge throughout Facebook in 2020. Here's an example from October. Another one is from March.
Next: In May, Daytime with Kimberly & Esteban's Texas hottest morning program, Daytime, asked: What's the one thing you won't eat no matter what? 58.6M people answered this question. 2.7 Million of them responded. This question has been around for years on Twitter and other meme pages.
No. No. 5 Found wife, mother, and author Christina Watts started a fight over sugar on spaghetti. This was witnessed by 58.6 millions people; comedian Steve Harvey had tweeted the exact question less than a week before.
We have to wait until the sixth post before we find anything remotely original from President Biden's message that received 52.8 million views. It appears that he has cross-posted his message via Twitter, as did his predecessor.
The rest of the top 20 are basically in the same boat: many viral questions taken from Reddit and Quora, Twitter, or other sites, and rewarded with massive engagement on Facebook.
You might be rolling your eyes at this point. What's the big deal that some meme-stealing pages took memes from other meme-stealing pages? Let me also admit that Texas-based daytime talk show Facebook pages don't usually adhere to the same zero tolerance policy for plagiarism as journalists.
Facebook is a long-standing home for reappropriated content. This includes the 2017 pivot to video freebooting scandal and the recent Instagrams Reels flood of videos with TikTok watermarks.
This kind of cheap, dumb growth hacking is something that should be familiar to anyone who was even remotely interested in the 2016 election. Russia's Internet Research Agency hired a troll army in order to create large followings on innocent-looking Facebook pages. They used a variety of engagement bait and then slowly shifted the pages to start sharing divisive political memes.
It's much more difficult to do this now because of a number of Facebook measures that make it harder for people to hide their identity or country of origin. Facebook routinely deletes pages whose creators are suspected. It is worth noting that the inauthentic behavior of 2016 did not play any significant role in the recent election.
Facebook has an anti-abusive audience building policy. It prohibits the changing of pages names or switching topics to grow a following.
It is remarkable that domestic actors still use these tactics five years after their initial success. You can steal questions from other sites, then spam them to your page. The result is that you are one of the most popular links in the quarter on the largest social network.
Today, I spoke with the company about this and they assured me that re-posting content taken from other sources does not violate their policies. It would be difficult to police, among other things. Facebook stated that posts like this must be deceptive in order to get them removed. For example, they need to lie about the origin of the post or their location.
Facebook has made great strides in eliminating fake accounts from its platform. However, the most popular posts on Facebook are those I consider to be inauthentic. These posts might prove less harmful in the short-term than the COVID misinformation or Big Lie rabble-rousing we get more excited about.
They would appear to be able to provide a motivated enemy with a wide attack surface over the long-term, however.
The data also hints at darker forces within the ecosystem. Plagiarists are likely to be in it for the clout and unearned audience growth. However, some characters appear to have more direct financial incentives.
Commentators have noticed the high number of spam networks in the list. This has been evident since the Facebook report was released. This is separate from the link list that lists the most viewed posts. The links list counts cumulative views across Facebook, while the former count views for each post. Ethan Zuckerman, a researcher, explored the history of the No. Link 9 on Facebook, an agency for former Green Bay Packers players. It has gotten 87 million hits thanks to players adding the link in low-effort meme posts.
I was attracted to the 15th most viewed link. It leads to an online storefront selling a Vietnam Memorial Flag. (Normally $24.00. You can get a collector's item because you are a hero. All you have to do is pay $20.00
These links are promoted through a series of memes that are posted every few hours on Facebook pages targeted at veterans. It can be found on the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Page and, more logically the Vietnam Veterans Page. The Desert Storm Veterans page also links to an online storefront that sells a Desert Storm memorial banner.
They have over 350,000 followers each. Their link received 37 million views in three months. These pages are run by who? Are they veterans? They don't give any clues and did not respond today to my messages. According to Facebook Messenger, one of the administrators did read my message.
Kristofer Goldsmith was astonished to see them. Kristofer has spent many years studying the ways bad actors can pose as military community members to operate various influence operations and grifts. He said that he had reported the network to Facebook before. He said that networks like these often plagiarize memes from legitimate military communities in order to sell merchandise.
Profiting from the suffering and death of service personnel
It is profiting from the suffering and death of service personnel, according to Goldsmith, who was a former investigator with Vietnam Veterans of America. He now runs Sparverius, an open-source intelligence agency. Goldsmith explained to me that it was named after the American Kestrel, the smallest predatory bird in Western hemisphere.
Goldsmith stated that Facebook was slow to act in cases in which page owners misrepresented their status as veterans to sell merchandise to military families. He said that he has tried to help Facebook understand the harm this causes to my community for over four years.
Facebook assured me that it would investigate the network. Facebook noted that it was often hard to determine the intent of a page owner from the content they post, and it could be reluctant to take action if there isn't enough evidence. There are many opinions about what constitutes spam. The line between spam and legitimate content is not always obvious.
The pages seem purpose-built to avoid spam detection. They have made it less likely that these memes will be reported as spam by posting heartbreaking memes targeting service personnel and their families.
No matter what the case may be, Facebook's popular posts and links all tell the same story: Copying other people's ideas is the best way to make it big on Facebook.
It may not surprise you if your history with Facebook is well-researched.
This column was published in conjunction with Platformer, a daily newsletter on Big Tech and democracy.
