Facebook-dependent publications suffered consequences after Meta dropped from the news business, affecting the platform referral traffic of several news sites. 

In 2023, Meta quietly made changes by reducing referral traffic to media outlets. 

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Facebook's News Exit Affects Publishers 

In a CNBC report, Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein shared that her publication saw a 99% drop in Facebook referrals after Meta changed its policy. Last September, Meta decided to "deprecate" its Facebook news tabs in the U.K., France, and Germany. 

According to Meta, the changes are "part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most." Hence, several publishers are claiming that Facebook ruined their traffic. 

Facebook reportedly accounted for 33% of the publishers' overall social traffic based on Chartbeat's analysis of 1,930 news and media websites. This is down from 50% from the year before. 

Facebook Pushes Away From News After Misinformation Plague 

Like any other social media platform, Facebook is one of the places that is plagued with misinformation. The company has been receiving complaints about the way it handles the issue. 

"At this point, it seems pretty clear from the comments that executives at Facebook and Meta made that they have just decided that news is more trouble than it's worth and that they will show people a fairly minimal amount of it,"

In addition, it was also the result of Facebook's decision to ban Canadian users from sharing news on its apps after the enactment of the Online News Act, which required tech companies to pay content fees to local media outlets. 

Meanwhile, a Meta spokesperson explained previously that people don't come to Facebook for news and political content, hence, the change is to provide what people value the most. 

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