Less News is Not Necessarily Good News

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One of the main reasons I check Facebook daily, albeit without ever posting or registering a like or dislike, is to seen what news pops up. Although I generally go directly to news organizations’ home pages directly first, there are other, smaller entities whose coverage I may not have noticed had they not appeared in my Facebook feed. I’ve wondered about the concept of “getting news from social media”, then, but am learning so much more about that through researching for the Social Media course and following certain reliable news sources such as Pew Research. Perhaps because I haven’t been entirely relying on any one social media platform as a news barometer, I didn’t notice that there had been a slowdown in social media platforms promoting news. As with most of what can be traced with platforms’ behavior, much depends on money and algorithms. A cascading effect of Apple’s 2021 change to its cookie policies that allowed consumers to opt out of a certain amount of tracking had the cascading effect of advertisers being more limited in their ability to reach into every social media spot that they could find to research and track consumers, in turn effecting even major social media platforms who could therefore not charge as much; resulting in lost revenue. As CNBC and other journalistic outlets examined, Apple cited consumer protection as their main impetus, but they were also clearly trying to gain control of their own advertising realm: Apple's ad privacy change imapct and a year after that, Axios reported a reduction in news coverage. One reason could be Apple’s disruption in the advertising ecosystem, but social media platforms are also wary of news platforms that could spread disinformation (and the possibility of getting into trouble for it), further adding to the decline in said platforms wanting to prioritize news coverage. I’m wondering if others of you in our blogosphere noticed any level of reduction in news -if you regularly follow social media- as it’s been such a sea change for certain businesses.

Comments

  1. Samantha MatherneOctober 30, 2023 at 8:26 AM

    On TikTok I follow @underthedesknews for a lot of national news and @unfilteredkiran for local news, as two examples. I also follow some who incorporate comedy into the news like @johnstone.gregory. I'm finding news on social media still, but I don't generally follow the big news corporations. My news from them only comes directly from their websites or apps. These days some major news sources tend to focus too much on how quickly they can report stories over how accurate the news actually is, and blowback from that could lead to some posting less news to social media, where it could spread quickly.

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  2. Natalie StansburyOctober 31, 2023 at 1:31 PM

    I will be honest with you, I had not thought about it until you said this. First, I stopped following news on my Facebook and Instagram about a year ago because I grew so tired of the onslaught and I also found that it was causing me so much anxiety! Then there was the arguing within the posts of course. That was the key reason for letting go of news on social media. Instead, I have chosen to let my social media more of what its original intention was and its namesake - social. I am unaware of changes, probably for that reason? But so glad to hear there have been some changes!

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