November 2020

Citing a Wall Street Journal report that Facebook actively overridden its set of rules to artificially restrict the success of liberal-leaning political content, Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffrey sidelined the corporation on Friday, saying that the settings in the rule set. it had decimated the site’s traffic, reduced revenue. In an extensive review of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s political movements in recent years, WSJ reported Friday that “in late 2017, when Facebook replaced its more sensible set of feeding rules to minimize the presence of political news , politicians were involved about the disproportionate effect of the adjustments on the right, adding the Daily Wire, other people familiar with the matter said. Engineers have redesigned the planned adjustments so that left-wing sites like Mother Jones are more affected than they are. expected, other people said. Mr. Zuckerberg approved the plans. Jeffrey tweeted that he was “furious” about this WSJ finding: 2 / Last year, @MonikaBauerlein and I wrote about how Facebook’s adjustments to its set of rules have harmed valid news organizations, so they were pumping right-wing disinformation machines. We used to have an effect on our or traffic as an example: https://t. co/FbLtTrukYpBUT pic. twitter. com/yMOQEa1KxG— Person Woman Man Camera TV (@ClaraJeffery) October 16, 2020 Also read: Twitter cancels policy on pirated material after blocking of a NY Post article A Facebook representative told the Journal that the company “had not made any adjustments with the aim of having an effect on individual publishers. ” Jeffrey disagreed, saying that Mother Jones was “a specific target” and that the set of rules it superseded was “an INTENTIONAL replacement to harm outlets that do serious investigative journalism. ” She shared statistics that the progressive medium is consistent with the month of page views through Facebook falling from 10 million in mid-2017 (and a height of 20 million in early 2017) to less than five million according to the month. mid-2017. mid-2018. Facebook’s adjustments also crushed Mother Jones from a monetary point of view, Jeffrey added. “What did those rule adjustments mean for Mother Jones? [Something] like $ 400,000 to $ 600,000 a year, ”Jeffrey tweeted. “This is vital for a news organization of our size. This year we have done everything imaginable not to say goodbye. But it did mean pay cuts for our paid employees, a loss of 401K. “As Jeffrey noted,` `The 10 most responsive links consistent with link building on Facebook still come from sites like Dan Bongino, Breitbart and The Daily Wire. The month Lastly, TheWrap took a deep dive into why right-wing publishers like that thrive on Facebook. You can read the full story by clicking here.