For years, conservatives have falsely claimed that they’re being censored on Facebook and other mainstream social media platforms. While some have migrated to alternative right-wing platforms that promise the ability to post with essentially no concern for user safety, many have continued to regularly post on Facebook. What some on the right decry as censorship is in most cases just private companies enforcing the community guidelines that users agree to when joining these platforms. Mainstream platforms have in fact repeatedly caved to bogus right-wing pressure and bent their rules in ways that favor conservatives. 

Media Matters and other researchers and journalists have repeatedly shown that there is no evidence of anti-conservative bias on Facebook. Since January 2018, Media Matters has conducted studies examining the engagement received by Facebook pages that post about U.S. news and politics, each of which has shown that right-leaning pages outperform or perform at least equally to left-leaning pages on the platform. 

New analysis of data from 2020 through 2022 shows that right-leaning pages have continued to largely outpace others — even as overall performance of political pages dropped in 2022. Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled and reviewed data for nearly 29 million posts from Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1, 2020, to December 31, 2022. 

From January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2022, Facebook pages that post about U.S. news and politics posted nearly 29 million times, earning nearly 37 billion interactions. Right-leaning pages earned more total interactions on their posts than either left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages — even though nonaligned pages posted more.

Of the nearly 29 million posts reviewed in the study, about 20.4 million (71%) were shared by ideologically nonaligned pages, 5.5 million (19%) were shared by right-leaning pages, and 2.9 million (10%) were shared by left-leaning pages. Of the nearly 37 billion total interactions earned on these posts, right-leaning pages earned nearly 16 billion (42%), while nonaligned pages earned over 12 billion (33%), and left-leaning pages earned over 9 billion (25%).

In both 2020 and 2021, ideologically nonaligned pages posted more than right-leaning or left-leaning pages, but right-leaning pages earned the most interactions by far. Right-leaning pages earned roughly 10% more total interactions than nonaligned pages in 2020, and roughly 15% more in 2021. In 2022 — the only year when nonaligned pages earned the most total interactions — they pulled ahead of right-leaning pages by just 2%. 

Nonaligned pages earned more total interactions in 2022 in part because nonaligned pages had millions more posts. In fact, right-leaning pages still earned more average interactions per post than ideologically nonaligned pages that year, with nonaligned pages earning just over 420 average interactions per post, or less than a third of the roughly 1,520 average interactions per post earned by the right-leaning pages.

Each year these three groups posted about the same amount as they did the previous year: about 7 million posts from ideologically nonaligned pages, about 2 million posts from right-leaning pages, and about 1 million posts from left-leaning pages. The total number of interactions earned on these posts, however, as well as the average number of interactions earned per post, dropped in 2022.

In 2020, these pages shared nearly 10 million posts and earned over 17 billion total interactions, averaging nearly 1,730 interactions per post. In 2021, these pages shared nearly 9.5 million posts and earned over 12 billion total interactions, averaging nearly 1,300 interactions per post.

In 2022, these pages shared nearly 9.5 million posts, but earned just 7.6 billion total interactions, averaging only 800 interactions per post. Each year, the amount of posts stayed consistent, while interactions with those posts dwindled across the board.

Of the ten pages that earned the most total interactions on their posts between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022, 5 were right-leaning, 2 were left-leaning, and 3 were ideologically nonaligned. These right-leaning pages include:

• Ben Shapiro, which earned nearly 894 million total interactions on over 104,000 posts.
• Fox News, which earned nearly 876 million total interactions on nearly 59,000 posts.
• Donald J. Trump, which earned nearly 852 million total interactions on over 6,000 posts.
• Breitbart, which earned nearly 600 million total interactions on about 57,000 posts.
• Dan Bongino, which earned over 534 million total interactions on nearly 23,000 posts.

The page that earned the most interactions over the three-year period was Occupy Democrats, a left-leaning page which earned over 1 billion total interactions on nearly 53,000 posts. The only other left-leaning page in the top 10 was The Other 98%, which earned more than 664 million total interactions on about 23,000 posts.

Ideologically nonaligned pages in the top 10 include CNN, which earned over 437 million total interactions on nearly 58,000 posts; People, which earned over 336 million total interactions on nearly 79,000 posts; and ABC News, which earned nearly 336 million total interactions on over 103,000 posts.

While the Facebook page for right-wing media outlet Newsmax was not among the top 10 for the three-year time frame, the page was among the top 10 pages in 2021 and 2022. Newsmax similarly saw an increase in TV viewership during the final months of Trump's presidency, during which time the former president simultaneously promoted the right-wing outlet and criticized Fox News.

Of the ten posts to earn the most total interactions from Facebook pages that post about U.S. news and politics over the last three years, 6 were from right-leaning pages. The post with the most total interactions over the last three years came from the right-wing page The Epoch Times and was posted on July 9, 2020. It featured an upsetting video of a prematurely born child, originally shared in a post by the Facebook page for New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television, another right-wing outlet owned by The Epoch Times. NTD Television’s post earned the third most total interactions during the three-year period.

In fact, 5 of the 6 posts from right-leaning pages in the top 10 are from The Epoch Times (and the affiliated NTD Television), which has used its more innocuous Facebook content to lure users towards more extreme posts, such as those with misleading and false information about COVID-19, the January 6 insurrection, or the 2020 presidential election. For example, another post from The Epoch Times, which earned the ninth most total interactions, features a harmless video of a baby getting vaccinated, but directs users to COVID-19 misinformation in the comments.

The Epoch Times also used Facebook to push false election fraud narratives leading up to the January 6 capitol insurrection.

Following the January 6 insurrection in 2021, Meta suspended Trump from posting on its platforms, publicly citing his use of Facebook “to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.” On January 25 of this year, Meta announced that it would be ending Trump’s suspension, and on March 17, Trump posted on Facebook for the first time since regaining access to his account. In other words, Trump was unable to post on Facebook for most of 2021 and all of 2022. Even so, his page still earned the 4th most total interactions of all pages studied over the three-year time frame.

The popularity of Trump’s Facebook page has been aided by an infrastructure of pro-Trump and right-wing networks that boost his posts and related content. This includes the Making Web network, which Slate described in 2018 as “part of a cottage industry of highly engaged Donald Trump fan pages that know how to get more likes, shares, and clicks than many of the traditional news outlets against which they compete for Facebook users’ attention.”

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts made on our list of 1,486 political and news-related Facebook pages that were posted between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022.

We reviewed the data for the resulting 28,826,520 posts, including total interactions — reactions, comments, and shares — using CrowdTangle.