Sometimes, these lists speak for themselves. But I want to dig a little deeper into today's list, because I think it illustrates something that isn't immediately obvious. https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/1290730301434388480

The #1, #4, and #10 posts on this list — representing more than 700,000 combined interactions — all link to versions of the same news story: a report about a $35 million grant from a DOJ program to organizations that house survivors of human trafficking.

Now, normally, you'd be surprised that a $35 million grant by an obscure federal agency would be the highest-performing story on Facebook.

But people who follow this stuff know that stories about human trafficking, *especially* stories involving Trump, are a QAnon bat signal.

And sure enough, if you check which pages shared these stories, you'll see plenty of QAnon pages like "Follow the White Rabbit" and "The Great Awakening."

They're using the story as more evidence that Trump is breaking up a child-trafficking cabal run by Democrats.

This is why looking at top-performing links (which Facebook has recently suggested is more accurate than looking at the posts that contain those links) can be misleading. After all, this is an AP story! What's the matter with the AP?

But the way it's being used is dangerous.

The engagement numbers on these stories are also way, way higher than you'd assume from looking at public post performance, which means they are likely traveling through private QAnon groups and person-to-person shares. (Facebook's public tools don't track that kind of data.)

This is why it's critical for social platforms to provide data not just about which posts by influential accounts are performing well, but about which posts are spreading virally user-to-user. This is what happened with Plandemic, and it happens regularly with QAnon content.

This is also why "banning QAnon" isn't really possible. It's in the bloodstream. Right-wing influencers know they'll get huge engagement on posts about child trafficking, etc., and they can post them without fear of being censored. (Because, after all, it's just a news story.)

I don't know what we do about this, as a society and a news business. Should the AP add a line to its story saying "PS: this is not evidence of a Satan-worshipping cabal?" Should Facebook limit this story's reach, because of how it's being framed?

I honestly don't know. But the reason I started tracking this stuff is because there's often more than meets the eye. And I hope Facebook and other social networks examine this problem holistically, and don't think pulling down a few hundred pages will solve it.