THE behemoth of social media, Facebook has been accused of allowing right-wing content to thrive and spread. But the online giant has now released data on what it says is actually its most read posts - and politics barely gets a look in.

 

So what are top of the Facebook pops?

According to data Facebook has made public for the first time, having previously kept such information under wraps, the content that gets the most views each quarter is essentially…nonsense.

 

How so?

A new report from the California-based firm, ranking the top 20 public posts, pages, links and domains seen by the most American Facebook users in their news feeds, finds that it’s all rather tame. The most viewed is a “letter scramble” that asks users to pick out the first three words they see from a jumble of letters - viewed by more than 80.6m.

 

The second most-viewed?

A post asking users over 30 to post a picture of themselves if they look younger than their age - seen by 61.4m.

 

What else drew social media users’ attention?

One of the top-10 most popular posts was a question asking: "Please settle this debate, does sugar go in spaghetti?" It was viewed by nearly 60m people. 

 

Any politics at all?

A post on President Joe Biden's account saying "100 days in - and America is getting back on track" was viewed by nearly 53m, but not far behind was a joke about making up your own rap name.

 

What were the most viewed links?

Among the top five most viewed links from April to June were a website selling Christian T-shirts, while other top links included a page on “incredible recipes” and a Unicef appeal related to the Covid surge in India.

 

What else was in the report?

The top 20 most visited domains, which were said to account for about 1.9% of all Facebook news feed content views in the US during the second quarter of the year. Facebook added that the news domains in the list accounted for only about 0.3% of all News Feed content views in the US during the same period.

 

However?

Critics pointed to the fact that the report - released in the wake of data gathered last year by Facebook’s engagement-measuring tool Crowdtangle, which found right-leaning political content was dominant on the platform - was based on metrics that didn’t meet the real-time data on the “reach” of posts that is vital to track the spread of misinformation - it looks at most viewed, rather than “most engaged with” content. But Facebook has since said that only 6 per cent of content seen by users is political.

 

It comes as….?

Facebook and it’s other social media firm, Instagram, took down more than 20 million pieces of content containing Covid-19 misinformation between the beginning of the pandemic and June.

 

What do Facebook say now?

Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity, said simply: “We are creating a report that provides a broad view.”