Facebook apparently suppressed a “Most Viewed Content” report for Q1 2021, since it reflected poorly on the social media site, and made it look bad, claims a report by The New York Times. This comes even after the company recently released a similar report for the second quarter of this year.
Might Have Caused A Public Relations Problem
The Times report says the list of most viewed content on Facebook for Q1 had a headline that could increase people’s hesitancy towards getting vaccinated against the COVID-19. The headline is said to have read, “A ‘healthy’ doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating why,” and was originally published by The South Florida Sun Sentinel, subsequently being rere-published in The Chicago Tribune.
The Times further asserts that while Facebook Inc. was planning to make the report public, company executives, including CMO and VP of Analytics, Alex Schultz, were pondering over the possibility of the same resulting in a potential public relations problem. This debate finally ended in the social media giant not publising the data altogether.
Spokesperson Andy Stone says that the company wanted to make some “fixes to the system,” keeping in mind the kind of “attention it would garner,” and hence, ultimately decided to not publish the data. Stone also provided some much-needed explanation on Schultz’s stance on the issue, saying that the latter had voted to let go of the report.
An Interesting List
In a similar report released for Q2 2021 on Thursday, quite a few interesting posts and headlines were found to be included in the list. Right at the top of the report was from Gaur Gopal Das, a monk and motivational speaker from India. The post, which also contains a viral image, has garnered a staggering 7 million comments, 394k shares, and 1.1 million reactions.
The next was a post made by musician Ace Gutta, challenging followers to share photos to prove they look young despite being old. It had some 4.9 million comments.
Also included in the list was a post by the page Daytime with Kimberly and Esteban, asking people to name one thing they will never eat, no matter how hungry they are.
POTUS Joe Biden’s post, that he had made following the completion of his first 100 days in office at the White House, was the sixth most popular in the US, with as many as 52.8 million views.
Credits: The Verge
