Facebook's most viewed post in the US in Q2 of CY2021 came from Mumbai

The post had 80.6 million content viewers in the US. The second-most viewed post had 61.4 million viewers

The most viewed post on Facebook in the US in the second quarter (April-June) was one from the page of a Mumbai-based monk, its first "Widely Viewed Content" report has revealed.

The post has an image of random alphabets and the text: "Whether this is your reality or not, this is certainly interesting. The first 3 words I saw were gratitude, connection and change. What are the first 3 words you see?" The post had 80.6 million content viewers in the US.

The second most viewed post was from Ace Gutta, CEO of Pyrex Music Group, at 61.4 million content viewers. The post had an image that said "I'm old but I look young challenge. Drop a pic. 30 and up".

Other notable posts included one from US President Joe Biden in April: "100 days in—and America is getting back on track". The post had 52.8 million views in Q2.

The report is first in a series of reports that Facebookn plans to bring out to give an overview of the most widely viewed content in the News Feed, including posts, links, pages, and domains. This report focuses on the content most viewed in the US.

"The content that’s seen by the most people isn’t necessarily the content that also gets the most engagement. Read more about how engagement — the likes, shares, and comments a Page or post generates — doesn’t equate to its reach, the number of people who actually see it," said Anna Stepanov, Director, Product Management at Facebook in a Newsroom post on Tuesday.

The report further found that the 57 per cent of posts that people see is from their family and friends, in line with changes Facebook made in the past so that content from friends and family makes up a larger portion of News Feed.

Less than 13 per cent of content views in the US were on posts with links, and the top-viewed news domains account for only 0.31 per cent of all content views in News Feed. Of those outlets, mainstream media dominate by views.

Community Standards Enforcement Report for Q2

Facebook also published its 10th Community Standards Enforcement Report.

"Prevalence of hate speech has decreased for three quarters in a row since we first began reporting it. This is due to improvements in proactively detecting hate speech and ranking changes in News Feed. Hate speech content removal has increased over 15X on Facebook and Instagram since we first began reporting it," said Guy Rosen, VP of Integrity at Facebook in a Newsroom post about the findings.

He added that Facebook also removed 20 million pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram globally for violating the platforms' policies on Covid19-related misinformation. As many as 3,000 accounts, pages, and groups were removed for repeatedly violating Facebook's rules against spreading Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation.

Interestingly, the 11th most viewed post in the US was from the Page of Brandon Jarrett, a Reporter/Anchor at WBKO-TV, who asked "Are you ditching the mask after the recent CDC announcement?" in May.

"We displayed warnings on more than 190 million pieces of Covid-related content on Facebook that our third-party fact-checking partners rated as false, partly false, altered or missing context, collaborating with 80 fact-checking organizations in more than 60 languages around the world," Rosen added in the newsroom post.

Overall, Facebook and Instagram's proactive rate (the percentage of content they took action on that they found before a user reported it) was over 90 per cent for 12 out of 13 policy areas on Facebook and nine out of 11 on Instagram.

The firm now includes 13 policy areas on Facebook and 11 on Instagram, and has added new metrics on appeals, restores, and prevalence.