[ajzinsbwbs]

Modifying the news feed algorithm to send less traffic to traditional news sites contributed to a lot of layoffs and general turmoil in the industry. This resulted in major animosity toward Facebook among journalists, which has encouraged them to highlight the negative effects of Facebook. These narratives encourage regulatory action against Facebook, which is now one of the main risks facing the company. I’d go so far as to say this little revenue-optimizing move may be a major cause of the media’s turn from fawning over big tech to trying to take it down. Similar story with the fights over payment for Google News previews in Europe. Squeezing journalists financially is a great example of a penny-wise, pound-foolish move.

[victorvation]

The original goal of reducing news prevalence was to show less outrage/clickbait and show more friends and family content. Of course, hindsight shows that the move was of limited efficacy, but it's disingenuous to suggest that it was done in order to 'squeeze journalists'.

[ajzinsbwbs]

I don’t think harming journalists was the motive, but it was the outcome, and in hindsight it seems predictable. At least it should serve as a lesson to anyone who faces a similar decision in the future.

[Shish2k]

So is the lesson here “the media will destroy any social network that doesn’t feed the clickbait-outrage machine”? :(

[ajzinsbwbs]

I’m not sure. If Facebook had been more surgical to send less traffic to clickbait listicles, but more to Prestigious Investigative Journalists, would the outcome have been the same? Did the unemployed listicle authors find their passion and become serious journalists working the tech beat?

[GoRudy]

Facebook traffic is fairly low quality, one time type visits. Any publisher who built their business with a dependency on FB traffic was doomed to fail no matter what if they didn't convert those users to email registrations, subscribers etc..