Many people noticed that news about the war in Israel did not appear much in their Facebook feed, even though they were interested in the topic. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, everything has changed a lot, and one thing is clear: Facebook, Twitter (recently X), as well as TikTok and Instagram attach less and less importance to the display of news. What explains the fall?

The decline of news in social networks

4-5 years ago, news had a privileged position in social networks, and you could even see some of the publication’s posts that you “liked”. Another big change is that we are seeing more and more advertising on the networks and more and more paid but uninteresting posts.

However, the past two years have seen a decline in the presence of news in social media feeds, with data from US-based Similarweb cited by the New York Times showing that the share of web traffic coming from the largest US social media news sites has halved.

The Wall Street Journal saw a decline in web traffic through social media as recently as 18 months ago, and in an internal meeting, the editor-in-chief reportedly said that “a large part of us depends on algorithms.” about how articles are distributed on the Internet.

There have also been clear actions and statements: X Network has had news “downgraded” since Elon Musk’s arrival, and Elon Musk has had several “run-ins” against several major publications he has criticized. It was also announced a few days ago that Elon Musk removed headlines from news links posted on the former Twitter, further evidence that news has fallen out of favor.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said posting news on the group’s platforms sometimes does more harm than good because it creates controversial debates. Mosseri also recently said, referring to the new Threads platform, that “it won’t disrupt news content, but it won’t expand it either,” believing that would be too risky a move.

The big social networks no longer prioritize news, and because they have prioritized various paid publications from many fields, and because, given the scandals related to the spread of fake news and disinformation on the networks, company leaders have decided that it is easier will “downgrade” all news.

In the EU, social networks face heavy fines if they don’t moderate content properly, but the big companies haven’t invested enough in moderation, and in the case of the X network, they’ve fired quite a few moderators.

Under these conditions, the lack of willingness to invest in effective moderation also leads to a much weaker distribution of news article posts, so articles that spark heated debate (and lead to controversy) end up being seen by fewer and fewer people.

Facebook and the increasingly poor quality of the feed

The reduction in news is even more noticeable on Facebook, as you don’t even see articles from posts you’ve liked and favorited, hoping for the promise of posts appearing higher in your feed.

Meta (Facebook) has changed its algorithms frequently over the years, some changes have been announced publicly, others have been done silently. A few years ago, Facebook bosses said that the feed would prioritize posts from serious publications, and said that news was very important and would be at the top of the feed. This is no longer the case.

Also, a button called “Recent” appeared on Facebook, which allowed viewing all publications in reverse chronological order. Facebook has played with this button for years, sometimes pushing it to the front of the menu, saying that the user has control over the feed. Then Facebook “buried” this button in the menu so that almost no one could find it.

Regarding Facebook 8-9 years ago, there was intense debate that algorithms would no longer be as important in organizing the feed and users would have many settings to adjust countless details about the order in which they would see posts.

Internal Facebook data obtained by the Washington Post found that when people heavily customized their feed as part of Facebook tests, they stayed online less and engaged less. It was a red light for some Facebook bosses, and the lingering fear was that a feed that wasn’t dictated by powerful algorithms could bring a big negative to Facebook’s “engagement” section. Meta officials have repeatedly said that algorithms try to show users exactly what they’re interested in, starting with thousands of details in their browsing history. It’s pretty clear that when it comes to news, users aren’t getting anything too great.

Another small study from 2018 found that in a feed without active algorithms, users would see more uninteresting posts and would have to search harder to see the ones that would interest them.

About the idea of ​​displaying posts in reverse chronological order in the news feed, a Facebook executive said a few years ago that it would mean that users would see too many posts and too much misinformation and aggressive language if the algorithms did not apply anti-spam.

And on TikTok, where news has never been a top priority, it appears less often in the For You feed, and data from the US also shows that Google, which supports media through various projects, would give less importance to the News category .

It was written that Google has given up some employees from News, and that Google’s share of traffic for major publications in the United States has recently decreased.

Sources: New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post

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