Facebook shows users how many people viewed their posts

If you were using Facebook from your phone two days ago, and if you were paying close attention, you could have seen that, besides the like and comment counts, there was an extra one that showed how many people viewed a particular post. While this is common practice for brands on social networks, it might look a little creepy to the average user.

While Facebook shows you how many people have liked and commented on your posts, it doesn’t show you how many people have actually seen your post. The bug, discovered by a few users recently, only affects Facebook’s mobile site, and not Facebook for desktop or the company’s official mobile apps. And I’m talking about a 1-to-1000 ratio here.

This is the issue that is challenging page owners such as media organizations and businesses on Facebook, as while investments have been going in to increase the number of likes for pages, the page could only be reaching a fraction of the intended audience.

A study done by Stanford University researchers and Facebook’s data science team in 2013 revealed that the average Facebook user only reaches about 35 percent of their friends with a single post. But only Facebook holds the keys to the enigmatic News Feed.

It is unclear what has caused the bug to emerge, but according to The Verge, Facebook is already working on a patch to once again hide your true level of popularity.