Meta has had a piece published on Medium explaining that news is not a driver for their platforms success.
In Canada, we’ve seen the media publish a number of lies about news and Meta platforms. These lies include how Meta “steals” news content and republishes it without permission, Meta depends on news links for its success, Meta cannot live without news links, Meta is solely to blame for the decline in journalism, Meta needs a license before news links can be shared, and many others. Sometimes, these lies were backed by cleverly cherry picked data while others were just thrown out into the public with no evidence backing it at all, hoping that those lies will simply stick because it was published by a major media outlet.
Of course, the problem is, the major media outlets were inventing a completely different reality and coordinating with each other to push those narratives that simply do not stand up to scrutiny. As we’ve shown through multiple studies, news links is not something people go to their services for primarily. In fact, very few people are going to Facebook asking what is going on in the news for that day. Instead, most people are checking their feeds to see what is happening with friends and family or checking out funny pictures or videos.
In fact, for a lot of people, if they see a news article appear on, say, their Facebook feed, if it happens to look interesting, they’ll click. Otherwise, they’ll keep scrolling. Further, a large portion of the news links are posted by the publishers themselves who are hoping that their presence on other people’s feeds will drive traffic to their websites afterwards. In fact, many larger publishers go so far as to pay Facebook to “boost” their posts so that their posts receive extra eyeballs in the hopes of driving even more clicks to their respective websites.
None of this should be surprising to anyone. This is just stating the obvious about the nature of users and Meta platforms for the last several years now. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I can’t believe I have to type this out in a news article in an effort to be informative. Yet, thanks to last few years living with the link tax debate here in Canada, I not only have to state the obvious, but risk backlash for doing so because stating these very obvious facts could get link tax supporters to accuse me of being a “shill for Big Tech” for pointing all of this out. We really do live in an backwards world, don’t we?
Of course, it wasn’t enough to present research findings or stating the obvious. Some people in Canada needed proof that this was all the reality. Fortunately, Meta handed us this proof on a silver platter when they dropped news links back in August. Reality has come in like a freight train and even as this all happened, link tax supporters continued to bury their heads in the sand and exclaim that Meta wouldn’t last a week without news content.
Yet, here we are, 8 months later and Meta has been doing fine just as news outlets of all shapes and sizes suffered greatly from the development. Traffic for Meta remained unchanged, traffic for large media companies pages collapsed, Meta’s stock value soared, and newspapers began declaring bankruptcy as getting dropped from Meta proved to be the straw that broke the camels back for them. I mean, you’re not getting results any more definitive then that. If you were looking for proof of what critics like us were saying, there it is in plain black and white view. Seriously, what more do you need to see what a horrible idea a link tax is?
What’s more, this isn’t an issue tied exclusively to Canada, either. The reality of the nature of news content and Meta platforms has been a thing for other countries as well. As we noted earlier this month, Meta announced that they will not be renewing the deals they signed with Australian publishers in their effort to avoid being designated under the Australian version of the link tax, the Australian News Bargaining Code. The announcement reverses the baffling decision of the platform signing those deals several years ago. What they are doing now is arguably what they should’ve done all those years ago.
Sensing that their gravy train is suddenly going to stop soon, the Australian media panicked and started publishing disinformation about the whole affair. This includes false claims about how Meta platforms in Canada are now a disinformation hell hole thanks to the blocking of news links (disinformation really didn’t change all that much in Canada, actually. In fact, users didn’t notice much of a difference in their overall experience.) The goal for the large media companies is obvious: shame Meta into continuing to give them free money. Given what happened in Canada, the chances of that being a success is laughably slim.
Today, we are learning that Meta has published a statement on Medium about this whole situation. Basically, Meta set out to, well, state the obvious. You can read those comments here and they do a pretty good job at sticking with the facts:
There has been a lot of reporting about Meta’s role in the news industry in recent days and how news content is shared on our platform. We thought it would be helpful to share some important facts about news content on our services and our concerns with the News Media Bargaining Code.
Fact 1: People are interested in new types of content and formats
The truth is that interest in news is declining on our platforms and that our audiences are engaging with different types of content. Since 2021, there have been significant changes in the types and categories of content that people are consuming across our family of apps. For example, Reels did not exist in 2021, and today, people reshare Reels 3.5 billion times every day across Facebook and Instagram. Primarily, we know our audiences come to Facebook to share the ups and downs of life, connect to local community groups, promote their business and or discover entertaining content. Links to news stories are a very small proportion of that — less than 3% percent of the content people see in their Facebook Feed.
Fact 2: News is not the reason people use Facebook and Instagram
As a content type on Facebook, news is highly substitutable. We have observed that when there is less or no news on our platforms, people continue to use our services. However, much of the recent public debate suggests that Facebook needs or unfairly benefits from news content, including financially. This isn’t the case. Meta is a commercial business and it is in our interest to continue to create products and services that help us grow and be successful. The reality is that accessing news is simply not the reason most people use our services. We’ve seen this recently in Canada where we ended news availability in August 2023. People still come to Facebook even without news on the platform. Just as the number of people around the world using our technologies continues to grow, the number of daily and monthly active users on Facebook in Canada has increased since ending news availability.
Fact 3: Meta provides value to news organisations through our free services
News organisations choose to share their content on Facebook and Instagram. By taking advantage of this free distribution news businesses can grow their audiences, sell more subscriptions and boost ad revenue. Publishers keep 100% of the revenue from traffic and subscriptions derived from outbound links on Facebook. For example, in 2023 we estimate that Facebook Feed sent Australian publishers more than 2.3 billion free clicks — for no charge — driving an estimated (AUD) $115 million worth of value. Ultimately, there is a misunderstanding of how news content works on Facebook. Some have accused Meta of “taking” or “stealing” news content but that’s not the case. We don’t scrape or pull content from publisher websites, unlike other companies. We provide a free service which publishers voluntarily choose to use and can benefit from.
Fact 4: Users’ feed experience is tailored to their preferences
There have been claims disputing that news content makes up just 3% of content shown in Feed and that Meta isn’t reflecting the reality of what users see in Feed. Given the volume of content shared online, Facebook’s Feed is created to allow people to have their own personal experience. For example, if you like engaging with fashion content, it’s likely you’ll see more content from Pages or Groups that have similar interests, like clothing or retail. Sometimes you’ll also see suggestions for other content like Reels, that might include fashion related content. For people who engage a lot with news content, they’re likely to see more news related content as that is their preference. Overall, news makes up a very small portion of the updates people see in Feed.
Again, none of this is surprising. All the evidence we’ve seen pretty much confirms what Meta is saying here. There’s plenty more in the post as well, but if there is anything Meta said that is flat out wrong, I’m not personally seeing it.
Some might argue that the statement is misleading simply because Meta has supposedly been deprioritizing news content in the background, then saying users aren’t interested in the news publicly. If that were the case and that upset users, you would see a gradual decline in users and usage overall (and media companies would be all to happy to report that). The thing is, this is not what we’ve seen, so while news organizations may be unhappy with the move, it appears that it is also a move that users are either supportive of or are indifferent. So, it’s a bit of a non-starter argument as far as I can tell.
The bigger picture thing in all of this is that we’ve seen this all before in Canada. Meta stated the obvious to lawmakers and link tax supporters. Those statements are dismissed as either false or misleading by lawmakers and supporters of the link tax, Meta shrugs and says, “fine, have it your way”, and then proceeds to drop news links. From the sounds of things, Australia is about to repeat the history of what happened in Canada in that regard. Either way, we are about to witness another case of how you can’t talk your way into an alternate reality for everyone. Sooner or later, reality is going to give you the finger. The only thing left after that is the flowing of the tears.
