Publishers See A Sharp Decline In Facebook Referral Traffic As The Social Network Marks

In the US, Facebook is avoiding the news industry. More than a half-dozen publishers told me that the Meta-owned company discreetly implemented modifications in recent months that significantly decreased referral traffic to media outlets. The action has significantly reduced the amount of daily traffic that publications receive, with those that focus more on hard news appearing to suffer the most.

An executive at a big media business told me this week that “if you’re a major publisher, you’ve gotten nicked.” The official, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess the situation.

One publisher informed me that their referral traffic had decreased by more than 30% year over year. Another person reported seeing a 40% decrease. However, a sizable amount of lifestyle material is produced by both of those publishers. The declines have been greater for those who publish more content that is focused on hard news.

A news-focused publisher told me, “Facebook nuked everyone’s traffic,” adding that the company had subsequently adjusted its powerful algorithm to offer a repair, but that the change “hadn’t fixed” the issue much and that referral traffic was still significantly lower than it had been a year earlier.

Given how much traffic the social networking site once supplied to digital publishers, the problem is noteworthy. When Facebook was at its peak, news organizations were given access to a firehose of hits, and pieces frequently went viral on the site. However, the volume of traffic has significantly decreased in recent years, which has had an impact on the shops that developed business plans dependent on the corporation. The most recent adjustments further diminish the already dismal amounts of referral traffic.

A Meta representative declined to comment. However, the alterations that publishers are noticing are in line with the attitude that the company’s management have expressed in public regarding news. After attempting to woo publishers for a very long time,

There is no doubt that Mark Zuckerberg and company are leaving the journalism industry.

The departure occurs as legislators across the world take their efforts to compel Big Tech firms like Meta to compensate publishers for the information shared to their platforms much more seriously. Facebook has responded by threatening to remove all news articles from nations that enact such laws. This summer, when Canada approved such legislation, Meta removed news articles from its site there, a move that has drawn a lot of criticism.

Of course, in order to compete with TikTok, Meta has to create more space on its platforms for short-form video content, thus driving news out of the picture.

Whatever the cause, the company’s split from journalism is just another challenge in an unpleasant landscape that publishers are trying their best to navigate, some more successfully than others.

One of the publishers I spoke to me, “News publishers are experiencing three bubbles bursting at the same time. “One, the pandemic is over; two, nobody cares about [Donald] Trump anymore; and three, Facebook is no more.”