> I frequent the web sites of a two publications that block both crawlers and social media referrers, and they're quite civilized. I'd guess the causal arrow f

> I frequent the web sites of a two publications that block both crawlers and social media referrers, and they're quite civilized. I'd guess the causal arrow flows in the other direction. Publications that are explicitly targeting a smaller, more specific market can afford to avoid courting the kind of person who get their news from Facebook. But pubs that are going for a broader audience can't ignore this channel. I know someone's going to respond "maybe they shouldn't be targeting that audience then" but....why? If CNN stops pandering to the average dimbulb and said dimbulb's Facebook feed becomes even more dominated by Macedonian (actual) fake news sites, is that _better_, for either the reader or for society? The irreducible reality is that most people like the kind of crap that mainstream news sites put out, and those people need to get their news from somewhere. (By the way, this doesn't exclude mainstream "prestige" publications like the NYT that pretend they're going for high-minded audiences; their drivel just has one layer extra of tidying up than CNN's does).