Facebook bug adds 'view count' to posts, allowing users to see how many people are reading their updates

Facebook doesn't have any plans to officially add the feature — which is probably good, because nobody's reading your posts

Facebook chose the list of new reactions by studying which sentiments were expressed the most in comments (Facebook)

A Facebook bug is showing everyone exactly how popular their posts are.

The site appears to have accidentally turned on a feature that allows people to see the number of views on their post. It shows up alongside the Like button, apparently revealing how many people have seen a certain post.

Most users complained about the bug, with some describing it as "creepy" and "wrong".

The view counts appear under shared links, or those in posts, and sometimes appear in photos.

As such, it appears that they might sometimes be referring to the number of people who have viewed the link, rather than that individual post.

The bug appears to be only visible on the mobile site, and not on the desktop version or its mobile apps. It also doesn’t seem to be showing up for everyone.

Facebook told the Verge, which first reported the problem, that it was aware of the issue and was working to remove it.

Many other social networks show the amount of people that have seen posts — Vine tells users how many times a video has gone round, YouTube provides view counts, and Twitter gives detailed data about how many times a tweet has been seen, clicked on and more. But Facebook has always refused to show how much impact a post has had, showing only the number of likes and comments.

Facebook isn’t thought to be planning to add such a feature. And that may be with good reason, since people’s updates on the site tend not to be read — the Verge points to a 2013 study that found that each post is usually only seen by about 35 per cent of friends, and any posts in a month are only like to get to two out of three friends.