Meta has released its latest Widely Followed Content report showing the most popular posts in the second half of 2021.
Additionally, the report includes statistics on content that tends to be shared, a list of the most popular domains, and the most-viewed links, pages, and posts by US users.
Meta is transitioning to a new method of reporting the most widely viewed content.
For this report, Meta chose to display results based on old and new methods.
Meta uses “Content Views” and “Audience” as the primary metrics for generating reports on widely viewed content.
One of the key changes is an update to the link criteria included in the widely viewed link report. Links must now generate a preview to be considered a viewed link.
widely viewed link
Facebook said the most viewed links reflected Facebook users’ broad interest in topics such as humor, culture and do-it-yourself.
That said, 30% of the top 20 most widely viewed links are generated through inauthentic behavior and spam, according to the new method of the Widely Viewed Links report.
inauthentic behavior When users misrepresent themselves or artificially promote their content using tactics such as multiple Facebook accounts.
The top two most viewed links (59.3 million views combined) came from the same site.
In fact, the same domains account for 30% of all top links blocked for inauthentic behavior.
30% of inauthentic links managed to generate 112.2 million views before Facebook stepped in and blocked them.
Screenshot of the two most viewed links
The non-spam top 20 list includes:
- Private YouTube Videos
- YouTube Video – Politics
- TMZ article on Bob Saget
- Dot Gov Covid Test Page
- Tik Tok
- NBC News Article
- BBC News Article
- USPS Covid testing site
- Fox News Detroit Dog Rescue Article
- Huffington Post Super Bowl Halftime Article
- Offline Parking Domains (#15 with 12.3 million pageviews)
- ComicBook.com Articles
- BuzzFeed News Articles
- ScreenRant Articles
most popular post
Meta also publishes statistics on the most popular posts.
- 85.3% of views come from posts shared by people’s friends, groups people join, or Pages they follow
- 49.1% of posts from friends and people you follow
- 20.5% of posts from joined groups
- 15.7% posts from follow pages
- 11.7% posts from unconnected posts
- 3% other
Most Viewed Posts
Perhaps a commentary on 21st-century entertainment, the most popular post on Facebook in the second half of 2022 was a short video of a woman walking down an aisle on a sports field, shoving those she passed by casually. The post got 68 million views.
Top posts on Facebook
Image credit: Screenshot from transparent.fb.com/data/widely-viewed-content-report/, May 2022.The other most widely viewed posts are on similar trainwreck-level content.
Facebook Transparency Report
The biggest takeaway might be that Facebook would do a better job blocking spam sites if only one site could penetrate the top 20 most viewed links.
Or it could be that this site is very, very good at inauthentic behavior and shutting out competitors.
It would be interesting if in the future Meta publishes the top 100 most widely viewed links so that a bigger picture of what’s going on at Facebook can be seen.
Top 20 lists like Meta share only provide a partial view, so it seems to be only partially transparent.
Citation
Read the widely viewed content report
Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook
Read the full Meta Transparency report
Transparency Report, Second Half of 2021
Featured Image: Master1305/Shutterstock
