Publishers put up their website because they want people to go to it. They get ad impressions, subscriptions, sales for affiliate links or wine club memberships

Publishers put up their website because they want people to go to it. They get ad impressions, subscriptions, sales for affiliate links or wine club memberships or whatever their business model is. That said, I don't agree with the grandparent. In my view it's clearly win-win, and neither direction obviously benefits more than the other to me. "Free" seems like a fair compromise unless the news sites start blocking Facebook traffic, because the friction of agreeing on and setting up payment is costly.