For News Publishers, Facebook is a Less Reliable Friend

By Fred Vogelstein

IN JANUARY, FACEBOOK said it will reduce the volume of news in its news feed, in favor of more posts from friends and family. In fact, Facebook’s role in distributing news has been falling dramatically for more than a year.

Data from Parse.ly, which tracks visits to more than 2,500 publisher sites, shows that ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, more than 40 percent of traffic to those sites came from Facebook. By the end of 2017, Facebook accounted for less than 26 percent of traffic to those publishers.

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