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by joel_duplicate0.5816669276037654
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In the latest Open Thread, RandomEA requested that someone compile the top posts from the EA Facebook group. I gather Facebook doesn't provide group admins a way to do this, so I decided to attempt it as an opportunity to try my hand at web scraping.

Below are the top 50 posts ranked by total number of “reactions”. [Edit for clarity: This includes likes as well as the other options such as “love”, “haha”, “angry”, etc. It does not include comments/shares.] (Getting the correct number of comments is proving more complex, but I'm still hoping to work this out and post a follow up of top posts by number of comments.)

At RandomEA's suggestion, I've used the post author's initials, unless they're a prominent EA. I erred on the side of caution here, so apologies if you're more prominent than I realize :)

Finally, if you're working on an EA project that could benefit from some amount of data scraping or automation, I'd be happy to help if I can.

Without further ado...

Top 50 EA Facebook Group Posts by Total Reactions as of 8/19/2018

Edit: Here's a spreadsheet of all posts with 50+ "reactions". Apologies for formatting weirdness past the first 50.

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  • Post Author: J. S.
  • Year: 2016
  • Post Text: I just met Karen Anderson, Obama's former Chief of Staff for the President's Council of Economic Advisers and a long time "establishment" policy person. I was happy to hear her describe that the past few years has seen a "revolutionary" emphasis on data and evidence across all levels of government. In her view, this new way of thinking has become so engrained in bureaucracies that there's "no going back," even with a Trump presidency. So that's cool.
  • Post URL:
    https://facebook.com/groups/437177563005273/permalink/1031707346885622

 

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  • Post Author: Robert Wiblin
  • Year: 2015
  • Post Text: From seeing statistics on the 80,000 Hours page, my impression is that an extra 'like' on a post means it gets put into an extra 100-200 people's Facebook feeds, and drives 2-6 extra clicks on the link. This isn't a reason to click 'like' on everything, but likes are a real way of upvoting something that you think deserves more attention than other posts on Facebook.
  • Post URL:
    https://facebook.com/groups/437177563005273/permalink/937309016325456

 

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  • Post Author: S. M.
  • Year: 2016
  • Post Text: Hello EA! My name is Sean and I'm a member of Harvard EA. I am on the verge of successfully completing treatment for my 2nd bout with brain cancer. After finishing, I'm considering a bike trip from Boston to Florida to raise money for an effective initiative that may or may not be cancer related. Although cancer may be the most coherent option media-wise considering my personal experience, I'd like to both make the biggest impact possible and promote the idea of doing so. Any suggestions for the best initiative? I'm open to all suggestions.
  • Post URL:
    https://facebook.com/groups/437177563005273/permalink/1065583520164671

 

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  • Post Author: E. G.
  • Year: 2016
  • Post Text: [...]At EAGx Oxford we had a great workshop organised by Jess Whittlestone entitled “Conversations on Motivation” the aim of which was to hear leaders in the EA movement discuss how they stay motivated and mentally healthy under (often enormous) pressure, as well as how EAs in general can take care of their mental health while expending a lot of energy thinking, studying and working hard[...]
  • Post URL:
    https://facebook.com/groups/437177563005273/permalink/1222846544438367
  • Link Title: How to Get Therapy | gruntledandhinged.com
  • Link URL:
    https://gruntledandhinged.com/how-to-get-therapy/

 

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  • Post Author: M. R.
  • Year: 2016
  • Post Text: I personally don't need/like luxury. However, as a lawyer, when I drive a shitty car, the message that people are probably reading is: I'm not successful, so I'm a really bad lawyer. I think that bumper stickers or stickers in general with a message which would mean: ''I'm driving this because I believe in donating to charity'' or ''I enjoy giving more than I enjoy possessions'' . I don't think I'm the only one who feels I would need to look more successful. Any thoughts?
  • Post URL:
    https://facebook.com/groups/437177563005273/permalink/1094771537245869

 

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  • Post Author: K. Y.
  • Year: 2015
  • Post Text: I would like to ask the admins of this group to make a tiny change. Could the group please be named "Effective Altruism"? The reasoning is that "Effective Altruists" identifies a set of people, to which some belong and some do not. It doesn't leave room for people who are interested in the topic of effective altruism but might not yet identify that way[...]
  • Post URL:
    https://facebook.com/groups/437177563005273/permalink/923418271047864

 

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MichaelPlant2
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This may be the best moment of my life :) (no. 2 was leading the time I was top of the EA forum karma list...)

Out of interest, could you out how many reactions these got? I'd be curious to see what the distribution of reactions is.

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joel_duplicate0.58166692760376540
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Haha happy to have contributed to your best moment. I guess you can (re)name your first born after me or something :P

Sadly I don't have a break out of how many of each reaction per post (if that's what you mean). Only the total combined number of "likes", "loves", etc. per post. Although you can see that combined number in the spreadsheet I'll add to this post (once I fix it...see my reply to RandomEA).

EDIT: Added the link to the updated google sheet in the post.

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RandomEA0
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Thank you so much for doing this! Is the total number of reactions just the number of likes and comments or does it also include shares? And if you happen to have more than the top 50 (as you hinted at here), would you be willing to post just the links in a Google doc?

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joel_duplicate0.58166692760376540
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Ah I guess reactions is a bit ambiguous. By “reactions” I meant what Facebook calls “reactions”. This includes likes as well as the other options such as “love”, “haha”, “angry”, etc.

Claire’s previous list was based on “likes” but that was back before the other “reactions” existed so this seemed like the best analogue. I didn’t take into account comments/shares for this list. (Though as stated above, hoping to put together a separate list ranked by comments.) I’ve edited the post for clarity.

Great idea about sharing a larger list of links. Here’s a Google Sheet of all the posts with 50+ “reactions”. The post text/link titles will be a bit messy past the first 50. Enjoy!

EDIT: Ugh. I made a sorting error at some point while making that spreadsheet and some of the links are mismatched. I've unshared it for now and will add to the post once fixed. Stand by :)

EDIT 2: Updated the link above with the corrected sheet and also added to the body of the post. Should be all good now but feel free to leave a comment on it if you come across any link issues.

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