CODEWITHSUNDEEP
facebookfacebook-graph-api
Malte Skoruppa
Malte Skoruppa

Reputation: 1242

Missing group members when retrieving group members via Facebook API

I am trying to retrieve the list of members of a group via the Facebook API. It works in principle, but it seems that there's a discrepancy between the number of members as stated on the group page (when accessed via the browser) and the number of members retrieved via the Facebook API.

Steps to reproduce:

Consider for instance the following group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/141499479690556

As of right now, Facebook states that there are 1165 members in that group.

Now, go to the Graph API explorer (https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer) and access /v2.10/141499479690556/members?limit=1500 (I set the limit well above the number of group members here to make sure they are all in there).

As of right now, the returned data array only contains 1139 members.

Where are the missing 26 members?

And yes, I am absolutely sure noone "blocked" me or anything. Anyway, I tested this on several groups, even some I have never interacted with. There always appears to be a discrepancy, and the bigger the group, the bigger the discrepancy. In groups with over 5000 members, I have seen discrepancies of 100-200 people.

At first I thought there was a problem with paging (I originally used a smaller limit and used paging), but as you can see, the same problem appears even when the limit is high enough for all members to be returned at once.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 210

Answers (1)

ceejayoz
ceejayoz

Reputation: 180177

https://www.facebook.com/help/186433704739124

If you're seeing a total number of members that's different from the real number, it's possible that some people in the group now have inactive accounts.

When someone's account is inactive, it means that person can't be seen or found on Facebook. Even though he or she is still counted as a group member, they won't appear in the group anymore. An account can become inactive if someone chooses to deactivate it or if the account is disabled by Facebook.

Upvotes: 1

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