Facebook actually, actually needs you to know that it isn’t the hub of hate speech, divisiveness, and straight-up misinformation you may assume it’s. It needs you to know badly sufficient that on Wednesday, the corporate published its first-ever report detailing what Facebook claims are the most-viewed pages, posts, and domains that have been shared throughout the platform between this previous April and June. And if you happen to take Facebook’s phrase for it, Facebook appears to be like fairly good!

The report, which you’ll be able to take a look at here, paints a really completely different image than the numerous, many studies from unbiased researchers and reporters who’ve discovered that hyperpartisan content material garners essentially the most clicks on Facebook. The knowledge these individuals used, for essentially the most half, comes from CrowdTangle, an analytics instrument that Facebook bought out in 2016 as a way to present publishers on the platform which posts garner essentially the most engagement. And with each new report, the outcomes appeared to be the identical. Right-wing outrage consistently reigned the most well-liked posts within the U.S., with posts from figures like Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino consistently ranking as those Facebook customers have interaction with essentially the most.

The firm has beforehand countered that Crowdtangle solely reveals a narrow slice of what individuals are seeing on their Facebook feeds. Then they argued that time again. And again. Then studies emerged that Facebook had quietly begun gutting the Crowdtangle crew, arguing that the repetitional hurt being attributable to the instrument wasn’t well worth the transparency it supplied. That brings us to the brand new report, which the corporate promises will present skeptics what content material truly reaches the most individuals on the platform, as a substitute of measuring what will get essentially the most likes or no matter.

That content material, apparently, consists of debates about whether or not sugar ought to go in spaghetti, a tutorial on constructing your individual swimming pool from scratch, and a inventory photograph of a wrinkly baby bulldog. The hottest hyperlink being seen on the platform, Facebook stated, was to a site for Green Bay Packers alumni affiliation, which it says garnered eyeballs from 87.2 million customers. Number two on the record was a hyperlink to a storefront for CBD merchandise (72.1 million), and quantity 5 was a shop for Christian-themed t-shirts (51.6 million)

This actually isn’t the primary time that Facebook’s tried to counter arguments that its web site leads customers into polarizing political rabbitholes, and it received’t be the final. In the announcement, the corporate famous that it will launch comparable studies on “widely viewed content” on a quarterly foundation.

In a name with reporters, Facebook’s VP of Integrity, Guy Rosen, famous that “there’s a few gaps in the data that’s being used today, and the narrative that has emerged is quite simply wrong.”

“CrowdTangle is focused on interaction. CrowdTangle only has a limited set of certain pages, groups, and accounts,” he went on. “We are creating a report that provides a broad view and […] an accurate representation of what people’s experiences actually are on our platform.”

But for a report that’s all about “transparency,” the report is shockingly un-transparent. Facebook notes that its record of top-performing posts doesn’t “include content which have been subsequently taken down by the original content creator or by Facebook, or whose audience has changed.” One of those posts—garnering a reported 61.2 million views—ranked third on the record of most considered posts.

The report additionally solely checked out a slim slice of what most individuals consider once they hear “Facebook content.” It didn’t embody the numerous, many adverts littering the platform, nor did it embody any clips from Facebook Watch or any listings on Facebook Marketplace. Instead, it centered strictly on the content material in individuals’s Newsfeeds that have been getting the biggest share of our eyeballs, and even that quantity is an estimate. And even then, you want to take Facebook’s phrase for these figures—and the corporate has confirmed multiple times that it’s not above fudging figures to make itself look good.

In different phrases, this report is only another try from Facebook to show its transparency, whereas truly providing a whole lot of info that appears like transparency however is basically simply PR. If the corporate truly needs our belief, perhaps it ought to supply us methods to confirm these figures ourselves, as a substitute of studying them secondhand from Facebook itself.