Meta Rolls Out Its ‘Widely Viewed Content Report’ For Facebook And Here’s What Was Trending In Q4 Of 2023
Tech giant Meta just published its yearly ‘Widely Viewed Content Report’ for the Facebook app. This means we finally get to see what was trending on the platform during Q4 of last year.
The report is designed to give the world an up-close and personal glance at what sort of content was published and viewed on the platform and also helps to rid of any kind of misconception that the algorithm is biased.
For a while now, Meta’s systems were criticized for amplifying material that many felt was not exactly in demand. This included politically themed ads, argumentative data, and even those that favored divisive viewpoints.
But as this new report proves, that was not the case. All misconceptions are getting removed, the company says, as it strives to get more and more transparent with time.
Plenty of graphs are used to display stats linked to certain content trends seen online and what continues to dominate in the market with users. Today, close to 3 billion MAU make use of the app and with such a massive exposure, it’s great to know what it is that is taking over users’ feeds.
We’ve also witnessed tech giant Meta try its best to steer clear of all things politics online so what it is being replaced with was also something many were curious about. Now the real question is, what was trending in the last quarter of 2023?
Meta provides a comprehensive listing of all those posts that were viewed the most during this timeframe last year on the Facebook app. But shockingly, most of the posts were removed or ended up getting deactivated so we don’t understand what’s the logic in that.
The reason is simple, they ended up violating rules on the app but that did not stop so much content from reaching out to millions around the globe before it was deleted. Not knowing what the inactive posts were can be a little bit of a bummer, we won’t lie.
As far as which domains continue to dominate, it’s YouTube that continues to be in the lead as the top beneficiary for the content while GIFs from Tenor and clips from the TikTok app were revealed to come in at number three.
If we get into some more specifics in this regard, particular URLs that were referred to had to do mostly with the likes of gossip from Hollywood and Facebook continued to resemble the market tabloids. It’s a sign of relief that means because it details on the front that not a lot of politics was seen or published.
But wait, don’t get deceived too quickly. So many links are witnessed by millions online. And since news tends to have less of a shelf life than other content, they are more than likely to attain similar levels than those spreading gossip.
It was also interesting to see how the posts spoke about the shrinking stance of referral traffic on the Facebook app as more than 95% of all content published on the algorithms didn’t attain a link with them during the final quarter of 2023.
The figure keeps on changing dramatically as we saw it stand at 86% in 2021 and now more than 95% of content online doesn’t have a link on Facebook, with the report adding a 66% decline over time.
Hence, for those wondering the reason behind referral traffic from the app not being at par with what it was before, this might be a good explanation for just that.
Other than that, we don’t see a lot more to talk about in this report in terms of serious changes with the company’s trending Facebook platform. With time, it starts to represent more to the likes of tabloid magazines than anything else.
It’s made a great transformation from what it once used to be called out as and in case you’re still wondering, that was a political misinformation machine.
We agree that you’ll still find a few posts here and there or across certain groups or through shares on DMs but that’s about it. The app has really come a long way to conquer that label.
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