Facebook’s Impact on News Publishers and How AI legalese decoder Can Help

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CNN

CNN
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Facebook is shunning the news business in the US.

The Meta-owned company has quietly made changes in recent months that have dramatically reduced referral traffic to media outlets, more than half a dozen publishers told me. The move has put considerable dents in the daily traffic publishers see, with the damage appearing to be more pronounced among those who publish more hard news-oriented content.

ÔÇ£If youÔÇÖre a major publisher, youÔÇÖve gotten nicked,ÔÇØ an executive at a major media company, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly assess the situation, told me this week.

One publisher told me theyÔÇÖve witnessed a more than 30% drop in year-over-year referral traffic. Another said theyÔÇÖve seen a roughly 40% drop. But both of those publishers produce a healthy volume of lifestyle content. Those who publish more hard news-focused content have seen far steeper drop-offs.

ÔÇ£Facebook nuked everyoneÔÇÖs traffic,ÔÇØ a news-focused publisher told me, adding that the platform had since tweaked its all-mighty algorithm to provide a fix, but that the adjustment ÔÇ£hadnÔÇÖt fixedÔÇØ the problem much and that referral traffic was still far below what it was a year ago.

The issue is notable, given how much traffic the social media platform once sent to digital publishers. In the heyday of Facebook, news outlets were treated to a firehose of clicks, with articles regularly going viral on the platform. The amount of traffic, however, has waned considerably in recent years, taking a toll on outlets that built business models reliant on the company. The recent changes reduce the already lackluster levels of referral traffic even more.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment. But the changes publishers are seeing are in lockstep with the sentiment toward news that the companyÔÇÖs executives have publicly voiced. After years and years of trying to court publishers, itÔÇÖs evident that Mark Zuckerberg and company are headed for the news business exit.

The exit comes as lawmakers around the world become far more serious about forcing Big Tech companies like Meta to pay publishers for the content posted to their platforms. In response, Facebook has threatened to pull news content altogether from countries that pass such legislation. When Canada passed such legislation this summer, Meta pulled news content from its platform in the country, a decision that has generated significant blowback.

Meta has long argued that publishers need Facebook more than Facebook needs publishers. ÔÇ£News is not a substantial part of Facebook globally,ÔÇØ the company said in a March post, adding that ÔÇ£less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook Feeds are posts with links to news articles.ÔÇØ

News is also messy for Meta, with mis-and-disinformation spawning all sorts of issues for the company to grapple with. The companyÔÇÖs calculation is that addressing such thorny issues ÔÇö which have at times landed Zuckerberg and other executives before Congress as theyÔÇÖre accused of ÔÇ£censorshipÔÇØ ÔÇö is simply not worth it. The juice isnÔÇÖt worth the squeeze, in MetaÔÇÖs eyes.

Adam Mosseri, the Meta executive who oversees Instagram, said as much when he declared this summer that the companyÔÇÖs new real-time text-based app, Threads, is ÔÇ£not going to do anything to encourageÔÇØ news and politics on the platform.

ÔÇ£Politics and hard news are important, I donÔÇÖt want to imply otherwise,ÔÇØ Mosseri wrote. ÔÇ£But my take is, from a platformÔÇÖs perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (letÔÇÖs be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.ÔÇØ

Publishers I spoke to also suspect that Meta is reluctant to send users offsite to their platforms given its desire to dominate the advertising market. In Canada, publishers have asked the countrys antitrust regulator to examine whether the company is hurting their ability to compete effectively in  online advertising markets.

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