Social media giant Facebook released a report on ‘widely viewed content’ on the social media app which had been held back by the company’s executives due to concerns of criticism, the New York Times reported.
According to New York Times, the Q1 version of the report was shelved as it would look bad for the company.
In a series of tweets, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone on Sunday defended the company’s move. “We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favourable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look — and making note of some of the components of the story,” he tweeted.
We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favorable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look — and making note of some of the components of the story.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) August 21, 2021
“On the question of the unreleased report from earlier this year and why we held it. We ended up holding it because there were key fixes to the system we wanted to make.” He further added.
According to the Q2 report, the most viewed post on Facebook was a word game titled “First three words you see are your reality.” The second most viewed post was a photo challenge.
As reported by LiveMint, The top post on the Q1 report was a news piece about a doctor in Miami, who died two weeks after getting a covid-19 vaccine. The post, which some argue could promote vaccine hesitancy, was viewed over 5.3 million times on the platform.
Facebook has been under scrutiny regarding the information with the public and government. The White House had called out the company for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 and vaccines.
