If you are reading these words right now, there’s a pretty good chance you got here from Facebook. Nearly half of The Stranger’s online traffic comes from the social media site, and that’s probably less than other media outlets; unlike much of what you read online, The Stranger isn’t a solely digital media company, and we have a biweekly print publication (on news stands now!) plus a 30-year track record of always-right-never-wrong-fuck-you-for-thinking-otherwise reporting to keep people visiting the site. Still, 50 percent is a lot. Those clicks literally keep the lights on. And, like every other publisher with a Facebook page and a website, our Facebook traffic is about to take a major hit.
Much to our beleaguered social media manager’s chagrin, Facebook announced recently that they are, once again, changing the algorithm that decides what posts show up on your news feed. They do this all the time: First it was Upworthy-style click bait (“You Won’t Believe How This Baby Reacts to Sucking on A Lemon”), and then it was the pivot to video, which prompted media orgs like MTV News to fire all their writers and replace them with people who know how to work cameras, and now, they are taking us out of your goddamn feed altogether!!! RUDE!!!!
From the Times:
Media companies are bracing for the changes coming to Facebook’s News Feed — the column that appears when the site or app is opened — that will favor posts by friends over material from news organizations and other businesses…..
Facebook says its changes will improve the “well-being” of its users. In an effort to usher in this new mood of online pleasantness, its product teams will drop the former goal of helping people find “relevant content” as they test the “meaningful interactions” thesis.
The shift in strategy comes, not coincidentally, after a year in which Facebook came under governmental scrutiny for its role in spreading misinformation and hate speech. Mr. Zuckerberg gave his interview to The Times as his company was preparing for a Jan. 17 hearing, the second Capitol Hill inquiry into the online spread of extremist propaganda. During hearings last fall, Facebook told Congress that agents working for a Kremlin-linked company had disseminated content that reached an estimated 126 million users in the United States in 2016.
Clearly, this is going to have a major impact on every organization that derives traffic from Facebook, including the much beloved/hated publication you are reading right now. And while this is bad for those of us who want to stay in business, some have argued that this will ultimately be good for the republic: Facebook was an enormous influence on the 2016 election; the site was largely responsible for the spread of bullshit pro-Trump, anti-Hillary fake news stories, and unfunny memes leading voters to conclude that her emails were more important than his idiocy.
But here’s the thing: Diminishing the importance of news in your Facebook feed is only going to penalize those who publish actual non-glossy but important news, which—let’s be honest with ourselves—just isn’t as fun as stories about Morgan Freeman running for President because Killary belongs in jail. Which do you think is going to get shared more by the friends and family who will now be inadvertently curating your news feed? I’ll spoil it for you: It’s not the story about school budgets or police reform.
We already know what’s going to happen, because Facebook didn’t start here. They first rolled on this experiment in Serbia, Guatemala, Slovakia, Bolivia, and Cambodia. Stevan Dojcinovic, the editor-in-chief of the investigative non-profit KRIK, wrote about in the Times:
Last year, KRIK published an investigation showing that when he was a young surgeon, Zlatibor Loncar, who is now minister of health, had been contracted by a gang to kill one of its enemies, according to court testimony by protected witnesses. You’d think the story of a future minister administering poison through an IV would make a splash — but the mainstream outlets ignored it.
Going to KRIK’s website is the only way Serbian citizens could learn the truth about that story and many others like it. And until last month, most of our readers went to our site via Facebook.
Facebook allowed us to bypass mainstream channels and bring our stories to hundreds of thousands of readers. But now, even as the social network claims to be cracking down on “fake news,” it is on the verge of ruining us.
That’s why Mark Zuckerberg’s arbitrary experiments are so dangerous. The major TV channels, mainstream newspapers and organized-crime-run outlets will have no trouble buying Facebook ads or finding other ways to reach their audiences. It’s small, alternative organizations like mine that will suffer.
And like the one you are reading right now. So, if you care about The Stranger, do us a favor: Sign up for our newsletter. Download our app. Visit our website. Make SLOG your homepage. Go to our Facebook page and tell the bots that run this place that you want to see us first. It’s easy. Here’s how to do it:
And, as always, pick us up in print.
