

How Facebook likes are calculated - blazer7486
http://almightylink.ksablan.com/statistics/facebook-like-count-39-accurate/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=facebooklike39accurate

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ry0ohki
The topic makes FB sound deceitful, but they don't hide this information, it
says it right here:
<https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/>

The number shown is the sum of:

-The number of likes of this URL

-The number of shares of this URL (this includes copy/pasting a link back to Facebook)

-The number of likes and comments on stories on Facebook about this URL

-The number of inbox messages containing this URL as an attachment.

~~~
monochromatic
> The number of inbox messages containing this URL as an attachment.

I LOVE that they do this.

~~~
brendano
It's fascinating! It would be great to have this information from just normal
email -- the data's been there for many years -- but does it seem like privacy
invasion then? There doesn't seem to be any difference...

~~~
sp332
My mail feels private, Facebook doesn't. A lot of people complained loudly
when Google started scanning the text of emails to display "relevant" ads. My
guess is, there will not be very many people complaining about this.

~~~
monochromatic
I suspect it only feels this way to you and me because we know better than to
treat anything on Facebook as private, whereas email still feels like it at
least should be.

But for my older relatives, and also for a lot of my friends on Facebook, I
suspect there is no difference in their minds.

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barredo
To get the share of likes of any URL just

[https://api.facebook.com/method/links.getStats?urls=http://n...](https://api.facebook.com/method/links.getStats?urls=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2436872)
(for this thread) or
[https://api.facebook.com/method/links.getStats?urls=http://n...](https://api.facebook.com/method/links.getStats?urls=http://news.ycombinator.com/news)
for HN home

(View sourcecode if your browser doesn't format the XML to you as Firefox
does)

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terryjsmith
We noticed this when starting out company (which measures these stats for your
blog), and it never struck me as odd. Sure it seems a little disingenuous at
first, but the Like button has replaced the Share button as the preferred
implementation. Moreover, every like, share, or comment gets posted to your
wall for your friends to see (privacy settings depending) so you are in fact
"recommending" it.

~~~
ksablan
The difficulty with that is that some comments actually contest the
information in the article. For example, if someone commented on my blog post
and said "This is bogus, the like number is accurate" ... I would hardly call
that a recommendation.

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ashcairo
I've too noticed that they aggregate 'button clicked likes', comments and
shares as overall 'likes'. However, I just assumed that their logic is that if
someone posts a comment or shares the link, they're 'liking' it.

~~~
metageek
I don't think that logic holds; I can comment on something, or provide a link
to it, because I hate it.

~~~
atacrawl
True, but if you take "like" to mean "validate," then that logic does hold --
even if you hate an article you're sharing, you're still validating it.

~~~
mattmanser
Like does not mean validate though.

You may as well say if friend means totally random person you've only met
once. Oh, wait...

~~~
atacrawl
The reality of what "like" represents indicates otherwise.

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goldins
If they use the wording "recommend this" and not "liked this" then I expect
sharing and liking (but perhaps not commenting on) an article to constitute as
recommending it.

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brianbreslin
I think it's largely impossible for him to sift through this data accurately.
Who is to say that diff people didn't share something vs liking it? Also he
makes it seem as if the news sites are falsely reoresenting their content
popularity when all they are doing is presenting a fb social widget.

~~~
de90
I don't see too big of a problem with it regardless. If you spend your time
liking, sharing, or commenting on something there is obviously an 'emotional'
response to it. As long as FB doesn't start saying 'your friend x' likes this,
when in fact they posted a comment disagreeing there isn't a huge problem.
Even then I think the fact that it created a response of some sort is a
'like', atleast in the sense people I see use the like button..

~~~
JoeAltmaier
For most purposes, yes. But the author called out news reporting that quotes
these "stats". Its important for journalists to understand the differences.

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biznickman
I created a tool to calculate this over a year ago
(<http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-like-count>) ... this actually benefits
the publisher in that the more likes, the more likely a user will like it. Not
completely transparent, but it's a well known fact.

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jckay
Interesting...First of @Ksablan - you did use the word Lie...and secondly
while at first i thought it was a huge deal...its really not. The point of the
metric is social sharing...and Comments, likes and shares are all social
sharing you know? No need to get more granular than that i think

~~~
ricree
Unless the post has been edited since, I don't see anywhere in the post where
says the word lie.

As to your second point, it depends on how the number is being presented. If
it's being shown as the number of recommendations, then including the number
of comments is clearly inaccurate. A comment disagreeing with an article does
say something as a useful metric, but it certainly isn't a recommendation.

Not a particularly big deal in the long run, but I still think the article has
a point.

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AdamTReineke
Are there privacy options that hide the details of the likes from his tool (so
he can't count them) that Facebook can count and display in the widgets? Might
account for some of the difference.

~~~
ksablan
Actually, all of the likes, shares and comments were accounted for (the parts
added up to the sum) for each of the articles I examined. But there were a few
sites for which my button simply didn't work. I'm not sure how those sites
were able to do that.

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joelhaasnoot
They round off after 1000 Likes/Shares/Comments anyway (the widget reads 1K
for more than 1000, etc.), so many people won't expect it to be a perfect
statistic.

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gdulli
My world is upside down. I hope I don't find out today that LinkedIn
recommendations aren't accurate.

~~~
blazer7486
haha amazing. What's next? Amazon recommendations are all a creation of Jeff
Bezos imagination.

