The news that most Facebook users in the United States of America saw in the first quarter of 2021 was about a doctor who died after receiving a vaccine against the corona virus, according to a report whose publication was delayed by this social network.
The article was popular with vaccine skeptics, and was updated after it was proven that the vaccine was not linked to the doctor's death.
The New York Times claims that Facebook initially delayed the release of the report because the result would "look bad".
Facebook stated that the delay occurred in order to implement "key changes".
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This company has already published a report on "content viewed by a large number of users" for the second quarter of 2021.
It said the most popular post was a figure eight that promises to "reveal your reality".
The list of 20 posts that reached the largest number of users is mostly made up of similar, frivolous posts that contain questions.
The New York Times revealed on Friday that Facebook has delayed the release of this year's report for the period from January to March 2021.
The paper states that the report was not published due to fear of a "bad image for the company".
The link that most users accessed was an article from a commercial American newspaper that stated that a doctor died two weeks after receiving a vaccine against the corona virus.
This news or the link attracted almost 54 million views.
The article was subsequently updated with information from medical researchers who found that there was insufficient evidence to conclude whether the vaccine was responsible for the deaths.
Health institutions around the world have assessed that the vaccine against the corona virus is safe and very effective.
The report for the first quarter of this year also revealed that the 19th most attractive page on Facebook belongs to the Epoch Times media agency, which has been accused of spreading right-wing conspiracy theories.
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Analysis by Marijana Spring,
reporterka iz areas of disinformation and social networks
The widely circulated story of a doctor who died two weeks after receiving the coronavirus vaccine reveals just how fertile Facebook can be for anti-vaccination content.
This can be partly explained by the existence of a dedicated network of activists opposed to anti-covid vaccines.
Spreading emotional, personal stories like this one on Facebook is one of their primary tactics aimed at scaring and dissuading people from getting vaccinated - even when, as was the case with this story, the death turns out to have nothing to do with the vaccine. against the corona virus.
During the pandemic, these activists lumped real—and rare—stories of possible adverse vaccine side effects with extreme internet conspiracy theories, misappropriating medical debates, genuine grief, and legitimate issues.
This also shows the complexity of the disinformation ecosystem on social media - where users take a grain of truth, in this case an accurate news story, and turn it into a misleading story with no facts to back it up.
After the New York Times story was published, Facebook released the report.
"We thought about publishing the report earlier, but since we knew how much attention it would cause, which was seen this week, there were changes in the system that we wanted to make," said the spokesperson of this social network.
Facebook states that the aforementioned changes involve solving errors in some of the queries on which the report is based.
Spokesman Andy Stone wrote on Twitter that they were "guilty of wanting to clean the house before the guests arrived".
"We are criticized for that, but I repeat, it is not unfair," he stated.
We're guilty of cleaning up our house a bit before we invited company. We've been criticized for that; and again, that's not unfair.
- Andy Stone (@andymstone) August 21, 2021
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The emphasis in both quarterly reports is on what is viewed the most in the US, and not on the content that is liked, commented on and shared.
If you look at it, you get a different picture judging by the data collected by researchers and journalists using Facebook's user activity measurement tool Kraudtengl (Crowdtangle).
They suggest that right-wing political content is dominant on this platform.
Facebook vehemently opposed this, saying that only six percent of the content shown to users is of a political nature.
Some disinformation researchers are concerned that Facebook is turning its back on Crowdangle.
The company did not respond to the BBC's question about whether this tool had become compromised.
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