Facebook's Exodus: How the Platform is Choking Newsroom Traffic
Facebook, now part of Meta, is silently severing its ties with the news business in the United States. Recent months have witnessed subtle changes that have dramatically diminished referral traffic to media outlets, leaving publishers grappling with significant drops in daily traffic. The hardest hit are publishers focusing on hard news content, with some reporting referral traffic plunges of over 40 percent. This alarming trend underscores a significant shift in Facebook's stance towards news content and has far-reaching implications for the media landscape.
In the heyday of Facebook, news outlets enjoyed a constant stream of clicks, with articles frequently going viral on the platform. However, this trend has been steadily declining in recent years, already taking a toll on outlets that relied heavily on the platform for traffic. The latest changes by Facebook only exacerbate the already dwindling referral traffic—which severely impacts newsroom revenue.
This situation is noteworthy, since the amount of traffic that Facebook once directed towards digital publishers was so massive that entire publications could sustain themselves via the platform. However, it appears that Meta's executives have made a strategic decision to move away from the news business. “News is not a substantial part of Facebook globally,” the company said in March. “Less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook Feeds are posts with links to news articles.” Regarding the algorithm. a Meta spokesperson declined to comment on these changes. It is clear that Mark Zuckerberg and his team are taking steps towards reducing their involvement in the news sphere.
This shift coincides with growing pressure from lawmakers worldwide, who are increasingly pushing tech giants like Meta to compensate publishers for the content posted on their platforms and regulate the flow of mis- and disinformation. In response, Facebook and Meta have threatened to remove news content altogether in countries where such legislation is enacted. For example, when Canada introduced such legislation, Meta promptly pulled news content from its platform in the country. Meta’s response to this has been less than satisfactory.
“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise,” Adam Mosseri, a Meta executive who oversees Instagram, wrote in a statement this summer. “But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.” The company seems to have concluded that the effort required to address these issues is not worth the potential rewards.
Publishers have also voiced suspicions that Meta is reluctant to send users off-site to their platforms, as the company aims to dominate the advertising market. In Canada, publishers have asked the country's antitrust regulator to investigate whether Meta's actions are impeding their ability to compete in online advertising markets.
Furthermore, Meta's efforts to compete with platforms like TikTok have led to an increased focus on short-form video content, sidelining news further. The company's pivot away from news is just one more challenge in an already turbulent landscape, where publishers are navigating uncertain terrain. In the words of one publisher, "News publishers are going through three bubbles bursting at the same time: one is that no one cares about [Donald] Trump anymore; two, the pandemic is over; and now Facebook is gone."
These challenges underscore the need for media outlets to adapt and diversify their strategies in an evolving digital landscape, where reliance on a single platform can prove precarious.
