Meta Content Library

Version v3.0

Meta Content Library has a web-based user interface in which to explore data, test out search parameters, and assess whether the resulting data is appropriate for your planned research. No knowledge of query or programming languages is needed.

Meta Content Library API is a complementary API product that allows researchers to programmatically pull data from the same public content library.

Introduction

Content Library is a web-based tool that allows researchers to explore and understand data across Facebook and Instagram by offering a comprehensive, visual, and searchable collection of publicly accessible content.

For support at any time, refer to Get help in our Meta Content Library and API documentation.

For information about ongoing issues, visit the Data Transparency Status page.

Scope of included data

When you enter a query, you can select which platform you’d like to search (Facebook or Instagram). You can then select to search either the view-only public dataset or the downloadable public data subset.

Facebook

All public data available in Meta Content Library (view-only)

Data includes the following publicly accessible content:

• Posts on public Pages, public groups, public events

• Posts on public profiles with a verified badge or 25,000 or more followers

• Information about public Pages, public groups, public events and public profiles that meet the above criteria

Downloadable public data (from widely-known individuals and organizations)

Data includes the following publicly accessible content:

• Posts from public Pages with 15,000 or more likes or 15,000 or more followers

• Posts from public profiles with a verified badge or 25,000 or more followers

• Information about public Pages and public profiles that meet the above criteria

Public Pages include both classic Pages and the new Pages experience.

To be included in the downloadable public dataset, profiles must not be locked and must be set to public with a verified badge or 25,000 or more followers. A verified badge in this context refers to accounts confirmed as authentic and not those with a paid Meta Verified subscription. Learn more.

Downloadable public data consists of posts from eligible profiles and Pages to all surfaces, including groups, events and Pages.

Instagram

All public data available in Meta Content Library (view-only)

Data includes the following publicly accessible content:

• Posts from public business accounts and public creator accounts

• Posts from personal accounts set to public with 25,000 or more followers

• Information about public Instagram accounts that meet the above criteria

Downloadable public data (from widely-known individuals and organizations)

Data includes the following publicly accessible content:

• Posts from public business and public creator accounts with a verified badge or 25,000 or more followers

• Posts from personal accounts set to public with a verified badge or 25,000 or more followers

• Information about public Instagram accounts that meet the criteria above

Public Instagram accounts include professional accounts for businesses and creators. They also include a subset of personal accounts that meet qualification criteria, including account privacy set to public and either a verified badge or 25,000 or more followers. A verified badge in this context refers to accounts confirmed as authentic and not those with a paid Meta Verified subscription. Learn more.

Geographic scope

Public data from public Facebook Pages, groups, events and profiles, and from public Instagram accounts from most countries/territories. Public data/content will be excluded from these countries:

Australia Belarus China Crimea Cuba Hong Kong Iran Iraq North Korea Russia South Korea Syria Togo Ukraine - Lugansk and Donetsk regions Venezuela

This means that:

1. At least one admin of a public Facebook Page, group, event or profile, or one admin of a public Instagram account must have a stated location that is in a non-excluded region for information about that Page, group, event, profile or account to be accessible.

2. Of the Pages, groups, events, profiles and accounts that qualify based on #1, only posts made by users in non-excluded countries/territories are in scope.

Language scope

Search results in all languages are included unless the search is filtered based on language.

Components of a Facebook post

• Post reactions: number of reactions on the post or reel
• Post comments: number of comments on the post or reel
• Post shares: number of shares of the post or reel
• Post views: number of times the post or reel was on screen, not including times it appeared on the post owner’s screen. For video posts, views are counted whether the video was played or not. Only posts with more than 100 views display the view count. A post displays no view count value if there were fewer than 100 views as of the last refresh. View counts for Facebook posts or reels made before January 1, 2017 are not available. View counts are not available for Facebook posts created in the last 5-7 days due to the refresh cycle.
• Post owner: original creator of the post or reel
• Page admin country (for posts from Pages only): primary country or region of the Page admin(s) of the post or reel
• Post date: date posted to Facebook
• Post media (text): full text shared in the post
• Post media (image): images shared in the post
• Post media (video and reels): videos and reels shared in the post
• Post media (link): complete URL of the link shared in the post

Components of an Instagram post

• Post likes: number of like reactions on the post or reel
• Post comments: number of comments on the post or reel
• Post views: number of times the post or reel was on screen, not including times it appeared on the post owner’s screen. For video posts, views are counted whether the video was played or not. Only posts with more than 100 views display the view count. A post displays no view count value if there were fewer than 100 views as of the last refresh. View counts for Instagram posts or reels made before October 1, 2022 are not available. View counts are not available for Instagram posts created in the last 3-5 days due to the refresh cycle.
• Post owner: original producer of the post or reel
• Post date: date posted to Instagram
• Post media (image): images shared in the post
• Post media (videos and reels): videos and reels shared in the post
• Post media (album): posts containing two or more images or videos

Supported search options

Searching by URL or by keyword is supported. Search is case insensitive.

The following keyword searches are supported:

The following searches are not supported:

Supported filtering options

Facebook

Instagram

Supported viewing options

Search results can be shown in card view or in table view. You can switch between these view options using the dropdown displayed at the top right above the posts.

Card view displays the posts in a similar format to how they appear on Facebook or Instagram. Table view displays highlights about each post in a format that allows for easier browsing of a large number of posts on the same page. You can click the See more link following the post text preview to display more of the post’s content.

Supported sorting options

You have the following sorting options for search results:

• The date the post was made, from most to least recent
• The date the post was made, from least to most recent
• The number of views the post received, from highest to lowest (default sorting)

Save your searches

Save your specified search parameters for future use by clicking the Save search button on the top menu bar (hover over the button to view the label).

Then enter a name for your search and click Save.

Saved searches are available on your Home page (left menu bar). Click the corresponding View button to select a saved search. You have the option to display your saved searches with the most recent or the least recent at the top of the list.

Share your searches

Click the Share search button on the top menu bar to copy your search to share with others (hover over the button to view the label).

Create producer lists

Create custom producer lists (available only to you) for quick reuse in your searches. Start by clicking Producer lists in the left menu bar, then Create list. Give the list a name and specify Facebook or Instagram.

Click Create. Click +Add producers to search for and select the producers for your list. For Facebook, specify Pages, groups, events or profiles. For Instagram, all available producers are public accounts. You can select from view-only and downloadable producers when creating your lists. View-only producers will be excluded if you search downloadable public data. Once you have selected the producers for the list, click Done.

All custom producer lists are available on your Producer lists page in the left menu bar.

Download data

If you select the downloadable public data subset when you search, you’ll see a Download CSV button above your search results.

Be sure to note the estimated number of your search results (above the results on the search page) before you begin to download a CSV file. Search results greater than 100,000 are not able to be downloaded. If your search has returned more than 100,000 results, you’ll need to refine your query to reduce the number of results. You can continue to modify the search filters until the search results are under the maximum allowed for download.

After you have refined your search, you’ll be able to click the Download CSV button. Then a modal will display the search criteria used in your query. Note that results will be sorted newest to oldest in the downloaded CSV file, regardless of which sorting option you have applied when viewing the content. You’ll be prompted to enter a file name, and then you’ll be able to click to start the download.

Once your file is ready for download, go to Downloads in the left menu bar. All of the files you have requested to download are listed on this page, and you’ll be able to see which are ready for download and which are being prepared.

Select a file to download to your local machine. You can download up to 10 CSV files per day, with up to 100,000 search results per CSV file.

Get API code feature

Capture your current search in the form of Python or R code. Paste the code into Meta Content Library API to retrieve search results you can analyze in greater depth.

Step 1 Set your search criteria.

Step 2 Click the Get API code button in the top menu bar (hover over the button to view the label).

Step 3 The search criteria and corresponding API code are displayed, along with instructions (such as VPN access needed). In the codeblock, click the tab corresponding to your language preference (R or Python):

Be sure to note the size of your search results (above the results on the search page) before you use the same search in Content Library API. Search results greater than 100,000 will return an error in the API. See Get API Code for complete instructions.

Trends in posts created

The Trends in posts created graph shows how often content matching your search keywords was posted on Facebook or Instagram within your chosen date range. It's important to note that the graph values are not the actual number of posts but are normalized to a scale of 0-100. This normalization process involves dividing each data point by the highest point in the graph, then multiplying by 100 and rounding to the nearest whole number. A value of 50 indicates that the post frequency is half of the highest recorded, while a value of 0 suggests insufficient data for the query.

These graphs are estimations, meant to assist researchers in spotting patterns and trends in post volume. Normalization ensures consistency and comparability across various queries and experiments, allowing researchers to concentrate on relative differences and easily spot periods with the highest or lowest post volumes.

When you hover over the graph, a number appears showing the change compared to the previous day, week, or month, based on your chosen date range. The data points are daily for ranges under 270 days, weekly for ranges between 270 days and 5 years, and monthly for ranges over 5 years. This change metric is calculated by taking the difference between the current and previous values, dividing by the previous value, and then multiplying by 100. It displays as N/A if the previous value is 0 or unavailable.

Additional information

• The search index only searches raw text of content from public Pages, groups, and events. It does not search metadata of photos, full URL matches, or comments. Occasionally results will match terms that are semantically related to a query term, or contain the query term as a substring. Tags in a post cannot be searched.

• Search is case insensitive and only complete matches are returned (not partial matches).

• The tool retrieves only the top 1,000 search results, so the search results are not necessarily representative of all Facebook or Instagram posts on the search term in the specific timeframe of the query.

• The top 1,000 search results can differ slightly day to day, not only due to newly created content but also because post owners might have deleted the content or modified the privacy settings.

• Newly created Facebook profiles, newly created Instagram accounts, and content posted by these newly created profiles and accounts may not be included in Meta Content Library for up to 4 days.

• Grouping multiple keywords in querying the data is not supported for languages that are read right-to-left.

• Sorting by number of views is not supported by the Get API code feature. Results are always sorted by creation time in Content Library API.

• Each researcher is limited to a maximum of 60 searches per minute.

• Each researcher is limited to 500,000 total search results for Content Library and API combined per 7-day rolling window.

• Results in downloaded CSV files from Content Library will be counted towards your 500,000 total search results limit.

Learn More

• Quick links
• Meta Content Library
• Meta Content Library API documentation
• Get help
• Product Terms for Meta Research Tools