5 ms·

Social media traffic to top news sites craters

26 points by jedwhite 3y ago

brucethemoose2 3y ago
I hope Axios itself is OK. Their site is refreshlingly clean
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"The over-reliance on social media traffic kept news publishers from focusing on building stronger consumer products of their own. Publishers are better prepared now to defend their intellectual property in the AI era having learned from their mistakes of being too heavily reliant on third parties for survival."
jedwhite 3y ago
This other Axios post today about Meta's news leader stepping down also has some interesting points about the context in which this drop has taken place. https://www.axios.com/2023/10/03/campbell-brown-meta-news-exit https://www.axios.com/2023/10/03/campbell-brown-meta-news-ex...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ms512 3y ago
Posted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753719
anileated 3y ago
I imagine it is the hot dream of Microsoft and its suppliers to reduce news sites traffic to mostly just LLM. Google and Meta are regulated out of existence, and average Joe pays to access information through ChatGPT.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
I used to get most of my weekly news feed from BBC satirical shows - each week I would have 30 minutes catching up on which politician did what and why. ait was not a bad (domestic) round up and I think a few youtube channels could crawl out and create the replacements. Or exhale it's podcasts that are doing it. But either way if there is a vacuum ...
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I wonder how much X/Twitter turning to noise has affected this. Even if traffic directly from Twitter wasn't necessarily a big portion of incoming traffic, I feel like Twitter was a place that many people were using to hear about links, which would then get reshared around. People are exposed to a lot less variety now, with many folks dispersed elsewhere and the noise being so high on twitter/x. Our masses of friends are no longer there to help surface the more interesting bits.
asdff 3y ago
"Efforts to reach voters with trusted information are becoming more difficult as tech platforms lean into viral trends, instead of quality news." The snake is eating itself. What is most dangerous about the current situation is now how easy it is to pull the natural strings of the western world order. Democracy. The ballot referendum. How you "vote" with your dollar. All of these things could always have been tightly influenced and controlled, but this was done more or less through an indirect incentive structure that favored existing large investment. Now, anything is able to use these social media tools to run around existing capital structure and get whatever message out to voters and consumers directly. What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors, but simply whatever is able to abuse the viral phenomenon the best at the time and in the context. Coupled with the ease of generating high quality propaganda of any shape or form through various publicly released tools, we are in for interesting times, for sure.
- memen 3y ago
  > What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors,... If that is true, then there is your problem right there. A firm and stable democracy requires a large group of people with good education, political influence and capital. In other words, bourgeoisie. The 'major investors' should be this bourgeoisie. They should be with many, to ensure political discussion is actively supported throughout all layers of society. If this group shrinks, and there are fewer people with larger capital and influence, there is no incentive for political discussion, and thus no incentive for a healthy democracy. The major investors do not want the discussion, as they can easily discuss with the few of them. The proletariat do not want the discussion, cause they either do not have the education, or do not have the capital to organize it. Then the media is more and more reduced to propaganda and perception management from the 'major investors'. Democracy is not merely the freedom to vote. It is the open discussion in which everyone can participate and contribute with their knowledge and perspectives.
  - asdff 3y ago
    I agree with all of this. But I do wonder, hasn't it always been this way all the way back to the Greeks? I can't imagine they just let anyone in the polity influence weighty matters in the early democracies, they probably gossiped and bickered nonstop like the schoolyard/workplace drama we see today. I don't think its in human nature to just let off the controls and let everyone have an equal part in anything, you have to be some sort of trained monk free of desire and agenda to actually do that, along with everyone else too. I think most prefer to pick their friends and family ahead of strangers, and this in turn snowballs into the sort of world we see today, full of varying shades of nepotism and pulling up the ladder behind you whether you work at the top level of government or at a truck stop.
wewxjfq 3y ago
Browsing news sites became such an unpleasant experience that I'd like to avoid it at all cost. I'm not even talking about the content, just in terms of usability these sites are a disaster. Visiting a news site will only rob me of my time and nerves, so why would I?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
entuno 3y ago
The article talks about how these "top news sites" (which they don't seem to define) contain "quality information" and "trusted information" - but is that really true? Even sites that had a very good reputation like the BBC have increasingly been dumbing down their content and posting more clickbait in the last few years, and there are plenty of popular news sites (Fox, Daily Mail, etc) that are full of misinformation and trash. There are several news sites that I used to regularly read (both global and local news) which I've given up on, because the combination of lower quality content, clickbait and terrible UX means that they no longer feel like they're worth reading. So perhaps they need to consider whether some of this decrease in sharing on social media is down to the decrease in quality of the news sites themselves.
- orwin 3y ago
  Last time I looked, Fox, the website, was actually way more nuanced than FoxNews, and while the quality was still low, it's not much lower than 'regular' news website, and I wouldn't put it in the same bin as the Daily Mail. It's conservative with a smudge of neocon, but not full on neocon and grifters like UK's tabloïds.
choeger 3y ago
Could that be a consequence of TikTok's raise in popularity? AFAIK, it's much harder to share a link there compared to FB/X.
renegat0x0 3y ago
""Regulatory pressure and free speech concerns have pushed tech giants to abandon efforts to elevate quality information.""" Ahh yeah, before the free speech concerns the quality of information was top notch. Really. It was only because of free speech concerns the bar was dropped. Sums it about right. Tech giants never provided quality information. Social media platform were always full of disinformation, misinformation. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... Legacy media (tv, newspapers) was also used for propaganda. Social media is only continuation of propaganda of corporate interests, governments, people of power, celebrities.

26 points by jedwhite 3y ago

I hope Axios itself is OK. Their site is refreshlingly clean

"The over-reliance on social media traffic kept news publishers from focusing on building stronger consumer products of their own. Publishers are better prepared now to defend their intellectual property in the AI era having learned from their mistakes of being too heavily reliant on third parties for survival."

jedwhite 3y ago

This other Axios post today about Meta's news leader stepping down also has some interesting points about the context in which this drop has taken place. https://www.axios.com/2023/10/03/campbell-brown-meta-news-exit https://www.axios.com/2023/10/03/campbell-brown-meta-news-ex...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ms512 3y ago

Posted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753719

anileated 3y ago

I imagine it is the hot dream of Microsoft and its suppliers to reduce news sites traffic to mostly just LLM. Google and Meta are regulated out of existence, and average Joe pays to access information through ChatGPT.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

I used to get most of my weekly news feed from BBC satirical shows - each week I would have 30 minutes catching up on which politician did what and why. ait was not a bad (domestic) round up and I think a few youtube channels could crawl out and create the replacements. Or exhale it's podcasts that are doing it. But either way if there is a vacuum ...

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

I wonder how much X/Twitter turning to noise has affected this. Even if traffic directly from Twitter wasn't necessarily a big portion of incoming traffic, I feel like Twitter was a place that many people were using to hear about links, which would then get reshared around. People are exposed to a lot less variety now, with many folks dispersed elsewhere and the noise being so high on twitter/x. Our masses of friends are no longer there to help surface the more interesting bits.

asdff 3y ago

"Efforts to reach voters with trusted information are becoming more difficult as tech platforms lean into viral trends, instead of quality news." The snake is eating itself. What is most dangerous about the current situation is now how easy it is to pull the natural strings of the western world order. Democracy. The ballot referendum. How you "vote" with your dollar. All of these things could always have been tightly influenced and controlled, but this was done more or less through an indirect incentive structure that favored existing large investment. Now, anything is able to use these social media tools to run around existing capital structure and get whatever message out to voters and consumers directly. What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors, but simply whatever is able to abuse the viral phenomenon the best at the time and in the context. Coupled with the ease of generating high quality propaganda of any shape or form through various publicly released tools, we are in for interesting times, for sure.

memen 3y ago
> What captures the consciousness now isn't necessarily a consensus of an economies major investors,... If that is true, then there is your problem right there. A firm and stable democracy requires a large group of people with good education, political influence and capital. In other words, bourgeoisie. The 'major investors' should be this bourgeoisie. They should be with many, to ensure political discussion is actively supported throughout all layers of society. If this group shrinks, and there are fewer people with larger capital and influence, there is no incentive for political discussion, and thus no incentive for a healthy democracy. The major investors do not want the discussion, as they can easily discuss with the few of them. The proletariat do not want the discussion, cause they either do not have the education, or do not have the capital to organize it. Then the media is more and more reduced to propaganda and perception management from the 'major investors'. Democracy is not merely the freedom to vote. It is the open discussion in which everyone can participate and contribute with their knowledge and perspectives.
- asdff 3y ago
  I agree with all of this. But I do wonder, hasn't it always been this way all the way back to the Greeks? I can't imagine they just let anyone in the polity influence weighty matters in the early democracies, they probably gossiped and bickered nonstop like the schoolyard/workplace drama we see today. I don't think its in human nature to just let off the controls and let everyone have an equal part in anything, you have to be some sort of trained monk free of desire and agenda to actually do that, along with everyone else too. I think most prefer to pick their friends and family ahead of strangers, and this in turn snowballs into the sort of world we see today, full of varying shades of nepotism and pulling up the ladder behind you whether you work at the top level of government or at a truck stop.

wewxjfq 3y ago

Browsing news sites became such an unpleasant experience that I'd like to avoid it at all cost. I'm not even talking about the content, just in terms of usability these sites are a disaster. Visiting a news site will only rob me of my time and nerves, so why would I?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

entuno 3y ago

The article talks about how these "top news sites" (which they don't seem to define) contain "quality information" and "trusted information" - but is that really true? Even sites that had a very good reputation like the BBC have increasingly been dumbing down their content and posting more clickbait in the last few years, and there are plenty of popular news sites (Fox, Daily Mail, etc) that are full of misinformation and trash. There are several news sites that I used to regularly read (both global and local news) which I've given up on, because the combination of lower quality content, clickbait and terrible UX means that they no longer feel like they're worth reading. So perhaps they need to consider whether some of this decrease in sharing on social media is down to the decrease in quality of the news sites themselves.

orwin 3y ago
Last time I looked, Fox, the website, was actually way more nuanced than FoxNews, and while the quality was still low, it's not much lower than 'regular' news website, and I wouldn't put it in the same bin as the Daily Mail. It's conservative with a smudge of neocon, but not full on neocon and grifters like UK's tabloïds.

choeger 3y ago

Could that be a consequence of TikTok's raise in popularity? AFAIK, it's much harder to share a link there compared to FB/X.

renegat0x0 3y ago

""Regulatory pressure and free speech concerns have pushed tech giants to abandon efforts to elevate quality information.""" Ahh yeah, before the free speech concerns the quality of information was top notch. Really. It was only because of free speech concerns the bar was dropped. Sums it about right. Tech giants never provided quality information. Social media platform were always full of disinformation, misinformation. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op... Legacy media (tv, newspapers) was also used for propaganda. Social media is only continuation of propaganda of corporate interests, governments, people of power, celebrities.