‘The End of an Era': Facebook’s Final Days of Partnership With News Media Are Here

Some people are still grappling with the idea that Facebook is no longer a reliable partner for media — one that provides a gusher of traffic in exchange for encouraging users to share links. News flash: Meta’s flagship app hasn’t been reliable for a long time. And it won’t be for the foreseeable future.

This reality has a corporate body count. A whole cohort of brassy and ambitious media startups betting on social distribution, like BuzzFeed and Vice, has been humbled. And while their struggles are well documented, many smaller media operations, particularly hyperlocal publishers who are sometimes the only thing standing between their communities becoming news deserts, have been feeling the pain of Meta’s retrenchment.

“The era of media being able to rely on Facebook over, and it has been for a few years now,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Debra Williamson.

Williamson highlighted the timeline of events that illustrate a simple fact: Meta does what benefits Meta, regardless of its impact on media. Sometimes, it values news content. Other times, it prefers short videos or content with less misinformation risk and regulatory hassle.

On occasion, the company’s zig-zags have moved in a direction that helped news organizations. Facebook’s early hunger for content gave BuzzFeed a foundation for its brand back in the day. But at other times, Meta’s reshuffles have gravely harmed publishers, as was the case with a mid-2010s algorithm shakeup that hurt their traffic and showed media just how thin the ice they stood on was.

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In 2019, the pendulum swung again. Facebook, facing criticism for the Cambridge Analytica data leak and the social network’s role spreading misinformation in elections worldwide, announced a $300 million commitment toward supporting news content.

The company appears to have since concluded there wasn’t a payoff. A recent Meta-backed study reported news content was of “low value” to the social network and “less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook Feeds are posts with links to news articles.”

Backed by that data, Meta’s gone hard in the paint against Canada and California, decrying both for bills aimed at forcing the company to aid media financially. Meta’s stance these days is that news organizations need it more — to grow audience or potentially earn money as video creators — than it needs them. Meta representatives didn’t respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment.

“Is this the last straw for news and publishers on Facebook? I think the adage ‘never say never’ applies here,” Williamson said. Publishers need to have a backup plan, she said, but it’s possible Meta could change its stance once again.

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But for now, publishers seem mostly out in the cold. For example, in launching its new Threads app — a Twitter clone — this week, Meta made no mention of courting media organizations.

The cold, hard stats

Traffic was long Facebook’s currency for rewarding publishers for engaging with the social network. And that currency is weakening.

“Overall social referrals to the top 100 news and media sites were down 53% in May 2023, compared with May 2020, and for referrals from Facebook specifically that traffic was down 88%,” said Similarweb senior insights manager David Carr.

Even in an environment where news traffic is faltering across the board, Facebook is a source of particularly big dips, he noted.

Vice and BuzzFeed are among the major media operations that have seen their Facebook social referral traffic numbers drop off a cliff in recent years. Vice is down 89% since 2020 and 75% year over year, for example, and BuzzFeed has disclosed large drops in referral traffic from social networks in its quarterly earnings reports.

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“It is hard to pinpoint what the root cause of declining Facebook traffic is, but the platform has clearly expressed its resolve to shift focus from news content,” said Antoine Amann, the CEO of Echobox, a provider of social media management tools.

Echobox’s Social Media Index, which measures referrals to publishers’ sites, shows a sharp dropoff in Facebook traffic. May presented a particularly sharp dip that went beyond the steady decline of the past few years. According to the index, Facebook now, on average, accounts for a single-digit percentage of social media traffic referrals, down from the 11% average Echobox has seen in the past year that Amann noted.

Facing Facebook fluctuations

A top publisher who runs a mid-sized publication with an eight-figure Facebook following across multiple pages said recent changes in traffic patterns were puzzling enough to prompt inquiries to peers.

“Since mid-April, we have seen an almost 40% drop in average daily traffic from Facebook,” the publisher told TheWrap, speaking on condition of anonymity. That drop is consistent with Echobox’s index.

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In an informal poll, about 60% of those who responded to the publisher’s inquiries said they were experiencing irregularities with traffic from Facebook’s News Feed, which made some wonder if they were witnessing new algorithm tests.

“We have seen periods like this somewhat regularly over the past five years,” the publisher said. “This is the first time it’s lasted longer than a month or so.”

It doesn’t help, the publisher added, that many of his peers view Facebook as uncommunicative, keeping vital news-related data and insights about its algorithm hidden.

It’s not clear if the recent fluctuations are the result of specific tests or just the natural progression toward Meta’s stated goal of downplaying news content from feeds. But it may be time for publishers to adjust to this new normal, rather than hope for another shift back to news, experts said.

“Publishers should turn their attention towards fostering direct relationships with their audience, such as through personalized newsletters, rather than relying on third-party platforms,” Amann said.

Whether through intent or neglect, that’s been the message Meta’s been sending for some time.

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