In many social networks, there are public and private spaces (e.g. public Facebook pages/groups, and private groups). Content could start spreading on private spaces and spill over to the public parts (or vice versa). Previous studies have acknowledged the potential for content to transition between public and private domains, but a quantitative assessment of such spillover has been lacking. In this paper, we obtain aggregate counts of shares of news content in public and private spaces on Facebook. By comparing the ratio of private shares to the total shares of a piece of content, we provide a first look at information dynamics in private spaces, and to what extent researchers might be missing data if focusing only on public parts of a social network. Through data collected from a diverse set of sources, our study reveals that a significant portion of prominent news content is shared within private networks. We also demonstrate significant heterogeneity in private sharing patterns, and influenced by the topics covered. This study offers valuable insights into the quantitative dynamics of private content sharing for the first time.

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