There are three main ways that we measure what is getting attention on Facebook:
A) Interactions with public pages & groups
B) Interactions with links
C) Views/Impressions

There is a huge debate now about problems with these, but IMHO these problems are nuanced & *solvable*. /1
(A) "Interactions with public pages & groups" doesn& #39;t include personal accounts or private groups — but it does include non-link posts such as image memes and Facebook videos.
(B) "Interactions with links" is the only public way to measure engagement with news articles.
"(C) Views/Impressions" is about what people actually see.
(A) and (B) only includes likes, shares, and comments — so if you see something in your feed, or even click on it, that isn& #39;t counted.
Only Facebook sees (C), though it has shared (old) view data with a few researchers.
Folks like @SolomonMg, @alexstamos, and @johnwhegeman (Head of News Feed at FB) have complained that the @nytimes& #39;s @kevinroose is harming discourse.
Kevin uses (A) "Public group/post interactions" instead of (B) "Link interactions" or ideally (C) "Views/Impressions".
I have real respect for all of these people, and I think they all right. And all wrong. And perhaps missing some solutions.
Kevin, says "I don& #39;t have access to (B) or (C)".

Well, it turns out you can can (B) today.
@NewsWhip provides it.
(Other orgs like @ZignalLabs may also?)
Here& #39;s an example of what you could see with @NewsWhip from my research during the 2016 election. (Note the blatant misinformation in the top 5 stories being interacted with in 12 hour period.)

The key point—this seems to be *all* interactions, including private accounts. /6
I also used the API to track top sources each day and do analysis on interactions with reliable sources over time.

Creating charts like this. (Don& #39;t take the numbers literally, lots of room for interpretation there — but the trends are accurate and significant.) /7
So perhaps we have a solution for Kevin; he just needs to use the NewsWhip service or API. It seems to do exactly what @SolomonMg wants:
https://twitter.com/SolomonMg/status/1300098667291049984
It">https://twitter.com/SolomonMg... gets Kevin to (B) "Interactions with links". /9
That said — there is perhaps something real and important that one is measuring with CrowdTangle. Knowing what is happening on Facebook that doesn& #39;t just relate to links is important.
If a page is getting a lot of engagement through sensationalist images memes — that matters too.
But leaving that aside, what about @johnwhegeman& #39;s (Head of News Feed at FB) critique that you must use reach/impressions/views? https://twitter.com/johnwhegeman/status/1285358835465510912
Well,">https://twitter.com/johnwhege... I agree that this would be ideal.

I think it& #39;s bad that we don& #39;t have that data. We& #39;ve been asking for it forever. /11
I even wrote a whole piece about how it& #39;s a critical first step to fixing our information ecosystem. Back in Jan 2017: https://medium.com/@aviv/how-to-fix-a-news-ecosystem-4bf623f91d81

But">https://medium.com/@aviv/how... frankly, as far as I can tell, Facebook is the problem here. /12
There seem to be easy solutions to this that completely preserve privacy.

To get from (A) to (B), Facebook can simply let users of @CrowdTangle sort by link interactions.

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🚨" title="Polizeiautos mit drehendem Licht" aria-label="Emoji: Polizeiautos mit drehendem Licht">They already provide this datahttps://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🚨" title="Polizeiautos mit drehendem Licht" aria-label="Emoji: Polizeiautos mit drehendem Licht">

(via the Chrome extension)
They just need to let people sort by it..
To get from to (C), Facebook can simply provide impressions data in @CrowdTangle as an additional datapoint.

Please tell me what the privacy tradeoffs are here. Please. Maybe I& #39;m missing something? From adding a new number?
/12
I should also mention that @SocSciOne has worked with Facebook to create a dataset for analyzing interactions with URLs https://twitter.com/SolomonMg/status/1300156232267976705">https://twitter.com/SolomonMg... . This is great, but if I understand correctly, the data is only historical. We need to understand things in near-realtime. /13
So, to wrap this all up.
1) @kevinroose (and others!) can get some of the URL data they need to hold FB accountable today via NewsWhip.
2) CrowdTangle is useful for understanding Pages/Groups.
3) Facebook can & should allow sorting by URLs in CrowdTangle & add "reach" data.
You can follow @metaviv.
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