Sources in Canadian media say the ban on Facebook links has had a noticeable impact on Meta’s SEO traffic and in-app engagement, but the real concern is which route Google will take when the ban ends. year. “We will see over time what the short- and long-term consequences of this removal will be, particularly if it remains in place,” says Ganter.
The UK is not yet facing a link ban, and Meta pointed out in its blog that “people will still be able to view links to news articles on Facebook.” But it could happen.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill, currently going through the UK Parliament, could see Meta (along with Alphabet) labeled as holding Strategic Market Status (SMS) and therefore asked to contribute financially to content creators to ensure fair competition in the digital world. walk. The amount to be paid would be decided by arbitration, with the Competition and Markets Authority imposing fines on companies that refuse to pay. Similar systems are being explored in Malaysia, New Zealand and the United States; the EU already has a law that has led Google to sign revenue sharing agreements with more than 300 publishers.
Alphabet and Meta are resisting, saying the information isn’t even that useful to them. On Google, news-related queries make up just 2% of Google search, according to the company’s own statistics, while Meta said news makes up just 3% of what people see in their flow. Instead, according to Meta’s “Widely Viewed Content Report,” only 6.2% of content seen in feeds links to a source outside of Facebook. However, other research contradicts these figures. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey showed that half of American adults receive news from social media at least some of the time.
In Canada, Jean-Hugues Roy, a researcher at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), used Meta’s CrowdTangle tool to find out what people were seeing on Facebook after the news ban. What he found was largely clickbait, family posts and recipes. “You get bored quickly,” he says.
Although he found no evidence that misinformation was filling the void left by the news – as some had predicted – he was not entirely reassured. “Since Meta started removing news content, I realize that clickbait can be more toxic than I thought,” he says. He found examples of stories banned from the platform that had been repackaged by clickbait sites. “Some information does infiltrate, but through pseudo-media organizations that feed on press articles and enrich them with invented details and sensational headlines,” he says.
For the news organizations, Meta’s erratic news strategy shows the fragility of their decades-old pact. Traditional media relies on digital platforms for distribution, ceding enormous power to technology companies.
News may only make up a small percentage of Google and Facebook’s attention, but those snippets of SEO traffic and millions saved in donations and revenue sharing have certainly helped the struggling media industry . But after years of flip-flopping, destroying projects, and now banning links and withdrawing funding, Meta has made it clear that Facebook is not a reliable distributor of information.
“At some point, many news organizations lost touch with their audiences,” says Ganter. “It will take in-depth work to disintermediate relationships with their audiences or to create new platforms where the public and media outlets can meet on terms less disadvantageous to journalism. »
