Retrieve data from a Facebook page

[OmegaStarScream]

So, there is Facebook page (that belongs to a charity) and a person who's claiming to be not only part of that charity, but one of its founders and I want to confirm if he's telling the truth or not. I want to know if that profile is linked to that page in any of the following ways: was he tagged on that page before, did he like any of the page's posts or did he ever comment on one of their publication.

I was hoping there are some existing tools that could help me check the page automatically, without going through every single post manually.

If you can help with this task, let me know! I need this ASAP.

[1713289194]

1713289194

[TedMosby]

Have you tried to check their facebook fan page transperancy?
On that section you will get information about the creation date, nama changes history, and people who manage that page (if they choose to unhide this information).

[OmegaStarScream]

Have you tried to check their facebook fan page transperancy?
On that section you will get information about the creation date, nama changes history, and people who manage that page (if they choose to unhide this information).

I have tried to check that, but nothing is showing. The only thing I can see is the geographical location of the people managing the page.

[GreatArkansas]

Do the facebook page managed by multiple people?
It is difficult though, even if you will check every single post of the facebook page just to confirm if it is true, you still can't guarantee by that way.
Also, if he/she is one of the founders, then some founders or people on the charity may testify or prove if that person is one of the founders and telling the truth.

[jayce]

You could try to search any link between his profile and the project by writing his name and the project's name on the search box. Then filter the search results to posts only. Hope it works.

[Aveatrex]

I was hoping there are some existing tools that could help me check the page automatically, without going through every single post manually.

Chances that there isn't any existing tool that can do that are big, because a tool like that would need to use  Facebook's API but since fetching the actions (likes,posts and whatnot) of a profile requires the said profile to give permission to the application,it won't work in your case.


What you can try is, open the facebook page, inspect (right click, inspect) on the page, in the Elements tab use Ctrl+F to perform a keywords search and search for your guy's facebook name/username so you can see if he was tagged by the page in a post. Beware that this method is quite inefficient and isn't guaranteed to work.

[khaled0111]

If it's a group and both of you are members of this group and not following each other, then by visiting his profile you will see his last activity and posts there.
If it's a page with a huge list of posts then your best shot is to use a tool to scrape the page's public data.
I found few by searching on google but can't vouch for any of them.
TryNinja and LoyceV are experienced with scraping data so maybe they can help! (mentioning their names so they get notified).

[CucakRowo]

Like @GreatArkansas mentioned, facebook still applied manual checking.
To OP. Based on your thread title,  I just copy paste it in presearch, and found this : https://gwu-libraries.github.io/sfm-ui/posts/2018-01-02-facebook

[LoyceV]

TryNinja and LoyceV are experienced with scraping data so maybe they can help! (mentioning their names so they get notified).

Sorry, I can't help you with Facebook.

[OmegaStarScream]

It is difficult though, even if you will check every single post of the facebook page just to confirm if it is true, you still can't guarantee by that way.
Also, if he/she is one of the founders, then some founders or people on the charity may testify or prove if that person is one of the founders and telling the truth.

I know that doesn't guarantee it, but it would definitely help me to know his true intentions (especially in this particular case) and I did try to reach out to the charity, but I didn't get a response yet.

-snip

-snip-

No worries. I could've done it myself, but I don't think that scrapping is a good solution. AFAIK, Facebook doesn't show all the usernames. It would've just displayed something like:

Code:

"User 1"
"User 2"
...
And 30 more reacted to this post"

You could try to search any link between his profile and the project by writing his name and the project's name on the search box. Then filter the search results to posts only. Hope it works.

Thanks for your suggestion, but that didn't work. I think it only works on the content of the posts.

To OP. Based on your thread title,  I just copy paste it in presearch, and found this : https://gwu-libraries.github.io/sfm-ui/posts/2018-01-02-facebook

-snip-

Using inspect element won't work as I explained above and I know the permissions might be an issue, but I was hoping maybe I could retrieve such data directly from the page since anyone with a Facebook account can see them already? I couldn't find anything about that on the API documentation though...

I appreciate everyone's willingness to help. I guess I'll just have to wait for the organization's response.

[condoras]

I have a couple of questions/ suggestions that might help with the process.
1- Does this person have a FB account known by you? Instead of checking the group account, maybe it's faster to check his.
2- Usually (if not always) charities besides social media accounts have a site as well. Did you check their site for info (if they have one)?
3- Idk from which country is this charity or where is based but they should have a registration number that clarifies their organization. You can't create an organization without declaring it to a public body. In their declaration/ creation of their charity, the founders names must be written and ofc it should be real. Can you check their name somewhere, besides FB? Maybe checking Linkedin as well?

P.S: I hope that my suggestions don't sound foolish...