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The Intercept Got Zucked

Earlier this year, we noticed something strange about our website traffic: The number of people coming to The Intercept from stories shared on Facebook had fallen off a cliff.

In a single year, our Facebook traffic dropped by a whopping 53 percent. The number of visitors from our own Facebook page dropped by 83 percent.

This drop-off is being felt across the industry, confirming what we’ve long suspected: Facebook has changed its news feed algorithm to suppress links to legitimate news sources like The Intercept. 

Fewer readers means fewer donations — and for a nonprofit news outlet like us, that’s a serious issue. Our ongoing investigations of corporate corruption, government malfeasance, and the dark money pouring into 2024 elections simply depend on reader support…

Facebook has been gradually throttling hard news for a while — replacing it with content that’s upbeat and advertiser-friendly. But what we’ve seen this year is unprecedented. In the words of one news publisher, “Facebook nuked everyone’s traffic.”

Not coincidentally, a wave of digital news organizations have laid off staff, filed for bankruptcy, or shut down entirely in the last few months alone.

The Intercept has felt the pinch as well. When people don’t see us in their news feeds, fewer new readers find our journalism. Since reader support is a crucial part of how we fund our investigative reporting, that’s a very real problem.

Now, we’d love to just say, “We don’t need Mark Zuckerberg,” and be done with it. But the reality is that tens of millions of Americans still rely on Facebook as a primary news source. It will take time for readers and publishers alike to transition to this brave new world.

Source: an email from The Intercept, 08 September 2023

Zucked in the urban dictionary


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