What if you could see exactly how many people saw your post on Facebook, and compare that to other users posts? That's exactly what recently started happening to a number of users, due to a bug that shows view counts on some posts, both by individual users and pages.
The bug was reported by several users on Twitter on Wednesday, who started noticing view counts next to their posts.
Normally, "reach" -- a stat similar but not identical to the view count is only visible by page owners for their own posts; individual users should not be able to see any kind of statistics beyond the number of likes and shares, even for their own posts.
Anyone else see a "view" count on their Facebook posts now? pic.twitter.com/USrmCblRHq— Stephen Robles (@stephenrobles) October 14, 2015
@facebook , this is creepy. I have view count showing up on a personal photo set to friends only. Why is this? pic.twitter.com/Ja3Q18YRiq— Anna A-P (@annazabeth) October 14, 2015
WHAT IS THIS?! WHY IS THERE A PAGE/PHOTO VIEW COUNT ON FACEBOOK??!! TELL ME THIS ISN'T REAL pic.twitter.com/SwUg9kVxz9— Kæj Flöcke (@KageFlocka) October 14, 2015
The bug is currently only present on Facebook's mobile site (not in the official app, though) and Facebook is already working to fix it.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Mashable and The Verge that this is indeed a bug, and not a rollout of a new feature. The view counts were only visible to a small number of people, and will be removed soon.
The new view count on Facebook is definitely going to give me even more e-anxiety— binaricorn (@binaricorn) October 14, 2015
If you can see the view counts, enjoy it while it lasts, because Facebook has no plans of enabling this "feature" for all users -- it's there for Facebook's internal use. The rest of us will have to rely on Likes and thumbs up emojis to feed our online egos.
Updated 6:39 a.m. ET with background from a Facebook spokesperson.