Facebook Inc. today published its first report on what people on the platform look at the most, at least in the U.S., and the result is underwhelming.

The move in is line with criticism the company has faced over transparency issues, as well as the fact Facebook has been called out for promoting inflammatory and sometimes misleading content. After seeing the report, the results suggest users in the U.S. spend a lot of time on their Newsfeed looking at nothing very interesting.

From April 1 to June 30, the most viewed post in the U.S. was a typical word search that asks people to find three words, with those three words being “your reality.” That post has accumulated 80.4 million views. The irony is that it was posted by a “lifestyle coach” giving tips to people on improving their “mental well-being.”

If that isn’t enough to convince you that Americans prefer dalliance over brain strain, the next most viewed post was the “I’m old, but I look young challenge.” That had 61.4 million views. “This Facebook post is no longer available” was the next most viewed, followed by “What is something you will never eat, no matter how hungry you get?” and then a debate over whether sugar belongs on spaghetti.

Looking at the top 20 is enough to make anyone worry about the future of mankind. “If your VAGINA or PENIS was named after the last TV show/Movie u watched what would it be,” was also up there. Facebook said that the most views don’t always mean the most engagement, although the latter post was commented on 4.3 million times.

The most-seen links paint a different story. The top link took people to a website featuring the alumni of the Green Bay Packers football team, while the second link was related to CBD products. A UNICEF post about COVID-19 in India was next, followed by a recipes website and then a site that sells modern-looking Christian-themed T-shirts.

Unsurprisingly, the most viewed domain by a country mile was YouTube.com with 183.1 content viewers. Amazon.com was next in line, followed by UNICEF.org, Gofundme.com and Twitter.com. As for news media, the most viewed domain was abcnews.go.com. Dailymail.co.uk, NBCnews.com, CNN.com and CNSnews.com were also in the top 20.

“The top 20 domains seen here collectively accounted for about 1.9% of all News Feed content views in the U.S. during Q2 2021,” said Facebook. “The news domains in the list accounted for only about 0.3% of all News Feed content views in the U.S. during the same period.”

As anyone who uses Facebook will know, the vast majority of content in people’s Newsfeeds was from friends and people followed (57%), Group posts (19.3%) and Pages posts (8%). “The report is one of several we publish with the goal of being transparent about what people experience on the platform,” said Facebook, adding that future reports should cover other countries.

Photo: Christina Watts/Facebook