With no communication from the company, publishers relying on Facebook traffic are at the mercy of the inscrutable algorithm. Data shows an apparent change at Facebook in May caused website traffic to tank at some news sites.
If Facebook is reducing the amount of controversial news that users see, I think that’s a really good thing for society (since presumably this means that fake news and rage bait news is de-prioritized as well.) But it is very shitty that Facebook has so much power over so many companies. It’s upsetting that a single company has so much power over what people see online.
Facebook managed to convince the higher ups at journalism orgs that it was an easy revenue solution without providing data short of essentially “look how many people are on our site.”
Everyone I worked with in actual newsrooms knew a push to reliance on Facebook left us in a really bad position with predictable results, but it happened nonetheless.
If Facebook is reducing the amount of controversial news that users see, I think that’s a really good thing for society (since presumably this means that fake news and rage bait news is de-prioritized as well.) But it is very shitty that Facebook has so much power over so many companies. It’s upsetting that a single company has so much power over what people see online.
Facebook managed to convince the higher ups at journalism orgs that it was an easy revenue solution without providing data short of essentially “look how many people are on our site.”
Everyone I worked with in actual newsrooms knew a push to reliance on Facebook left us in a really bad position with predictable results, but it happened nonetheless.