Facebook Is DYING And Taking Buzzfeed Down With It
Facebook Is DYING And Taking Buzzfeed Down With It. With Facebook's loss of millennial users to Instagram young people are sharing less and this means digital sites that cater to woke young people are losing traffic and in turn ad revenue. At the same time Facebook deranked publisher content just about a year ago and it hasn't fared well for these outlets.Since the start of 2019 we have seen 2,300 media layoffs mostly at woke and far left media. It would seem in all likelihood that these sites were built off of leftist outrage and as Facebook ceases to cater to them and loses the audience it takes out leftist media with it.
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Since the beginning of 2019, we have seen 2,300 layoffs in digital media.
And we constantly hear about the digital media market is failing.
But what's interesting is that when they talk about this, they're usually talking about BuzzFeed and Vox and other left-wing digital media outlets.
They're not talking about conservative outlets.
There's new data from Nieman Lab showing that actually Fox News and the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, other conservative outlets are doing really, really well.
And so I started to think about why is it that the left, when it comes to digital media, is collapsing?
And the reason is, in my opinion, Facebook.
Facebook a year ago changed their algorithm to try and bring users back to the platform as they're bleeding millions of young users.
It didn't work.
This deranked digital media.
And at the same time, as millennials leave, they're not consuming BuzzFeed anymore.
So now we're seeing these layoffs, we're seeing morale drop, but we're seeing conservative media do just fine.
Today, let's take a look at the latest news surrounding the collapse of digital media and talk about how it predominantly is affecting the left.
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Our first story from Business Insider.
More than 2,300 people lost their jobs in a media landslide so far this year.
The media industry continued to announce large cuts Monday, as New York media laid off 32 employees and 5% of its full-time staff.
The announcement followed large rounds of layoffs in February from companies like BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.
The massive cuts so far this year represent a recent trend of cuts at digital media companies that sprung up as newspapers around the country were shrinking and disappearing.
Business Insider produced a list of all the media jobs lost so far.
Now what's particularly interesting here is while there are some organizations that have major cuts, it looks like left-wing digital media took huge hits.
With Vice dropping 250 staffers, Verizon cut 800 jobs, and this includes the Huffington Post, And BuzzFeed cut 200 people back in January.
There are many different outlets that cut staffers, but the biggest cuts came from these digital left-wing outlets.
And I had to wonder why that was.
The narrative tends to be that digital media doesn't work.
But then I have to wonder why so many conservative outlets are doing just fine.
They aren't laying anybody off.
The Washington Post published this story back in January.
BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, latest to feel pinch in faltering digital news economy.
In the story, they say, traditional media organizations such as newspapers and TV stations have been buffeted for years by the transition to a digital economy, with some of their readers and advertising base siphoned away by the likes of BuzzFeed, Vice, and Huffington Post.
But over the past several months, digital companies have faced some of the same issues as profits have proved elusive in an advertising market dominated by two giants, Google and Facebook.
The story talks about the layoffs and ads.
The layoffs reflect challenges in our industry, said one person briefed on BuzzFeed's plans, but also is an effort to bring the company's costs in line with its various divisions, including news, documentary video production, and licensing.
The company produces videos for Netflix, Oxygen, and others.
The reason I highlight this story is that the Washington Post is supposed to be mainstream media.
However, it's only highlighting these left-wing outlets that have had mass layoffs, and they're referring it to as the digital economy or the digital market.
Sure, we can talk about BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, and these other outlets losing their staff, Vice for instance, but these are left-wing outlets.
Conservative outlets are doing fine, and they're actually hiring, to a certain extent.
Recently, Nieman Lab published data.
We can see right here, top web publishers by Facebook engagement, Fox News is on top with 146 million engagements, and NBC just below with 127 million engagements.
We can move down and see that the Daily Wire, 77 million engagements, actually surpasses the New York Times, CBS News, and Huffington Post, obviously.
They say it's been a little over a year since Facebook announced major algorithm changes that would decrease the amount of news in News Feed, instead prioritizing non-publisher content that spurs engagement and provokes comments.
Fourteen or so months in, what does the news environment on Facebook look like?
A new report from social media tracking company Newswhip shows that the turn toward meaningful interactions has pushed up articles on divisive topics like abortion, religion, and guns, politics, rules, and the angry reaction dominates many pages, with Fox News driving the most angry reactions of anyone, with nearly double that of anyone else.
Of course, all that isn't only Facebook's fault.
The content that dominates the platform now might have risen even without an algorithmic boost.
But what's clear is that Mark Zuckerberg's January 2018 exhortation that the time spent on Facebook be time well spent has not come to pass.
Instead, it's often an angry, reactive place where people go to get worked up and to get scared.
Here are the two most shared Facebook stories of 2019 so far.
We can see it's from US 105 FM and Life News.
The first story, suspected human trafficker, child predator may be in our area.
And, you can't give a lethal injection to murderers in New York, but you can give one to an unborn baby.
There's a lot to break down here.
And I think there's one reason why we're seeing a shift in this news.
And it's not necessarily because Facebook changed their algorithm, but it's because millennials are leaving en masse.
And millennials aren't going to be arguing about abortion, gun rights, or immigration so much as older people will.
Older people tend to be conservative, they care more about those issues.
Those issues will then dominate news feeds, get more shares.
Look, if there's 100 old people and 10 young people, the old people are going to share way more stories just because there are more of them.
It's not that hard to understand.
What's interesting then is when they try to make the claim that it's conservatives who are the most angry, pages with the highest percentage of angries And Daily Kos is actually number two.
Daily Kos being a far-left activist website.
In fact, you have to go down beyond the sixth highest position to find the first conservative outlets.
Washington Post at number six.
Then we have Judicial Watch and Conservative News Today.
These are not necessarily very large outlets, but we can see Breitbart is in the list.
However, the point being, You do have Daily Kos and other left-wing activist sites dominating the amount of angry content being produced.
But it is also important to point out, Fox News, Breitbart, and official Ben Shapiro produce the most amount of angries.
I think it's important to draw the distinction between the amount of content produced versus the percentage likelihood someone will be angered by the content.
Although Fox News, Breitbart, and Ben Shapiro produce the most angry reactions, Daily Kos is still number two in terms of And of course, we can see CNN, Daily Mail, and Occupy Democrats, Huffington Post, not far behind.
So you do see right-wing news, but also left-wing activism in this list.
Mass media layoffs.
Buzzfeed, in my opinion, is dying off.
Many of these companies are dying off.
They're shrinking.
I work for a company called Fusion.
For a while, it was a joint venture between ABC and Univision.
Univision eventually took over, and they tried pushing themselves to the far left to attract a new audience.
It didn't work.
They fired most of their staff, and now it's a skeleton crew.
There's just a small handful of people who produce content for what's now called Splinter News, a far-left Rather reactionary website.
But to me, this is an image of what's to come for sites like Huffington Post and BuzzFeed.
They're not going to be able to maintain their growth because their companies were born off of Facebook's algorithms.
They were entirely dependent on Facebook.
I recently talked to somebody who had worked a bit with Facebook and knew many of their insiders and said their attitude is basically, it's your fault for building a company off of our platform.
If we change our platform and you lose out, that's your problem, not ours.
And it would seem that because millennials are leaving, Because they're not sharing or active on the platform anymore, and because Facebook is de-ranking news, well, these digital millennial blogs that tend to be far left are dying out, and conservative sites are doing better than ever.
As you get rid of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, it creates more space for conservative outlets.
It's a snowball rolling down a hill that's eventually, in my opinion, going to give conservatives the dominant voice on Facebook.
There's the obvious demographic issue where, as I mentioned, older people tend to be more conservative.
Combined with this data on Facebook usage, we can see that ages 12 to 34 are in decline.
Only 62% of people in this demographic are using the platform.
but 35 to 54 has actually stabilized at 69% and ages 55 plus has actually gone up.
Now where are all these young people going?
Instagram, primarily.
And it's extremely difficult to share content on Instagram.
You can't really link to things effectively, and you can't re-post or re-tweet or re-Instagram.
So that means people on Instagram are mostly talking to their friends in messages, sending photos, or posting stories.
They're not sharing the way people used to share on Facebook.
They're not getting angry and riled up and sharing stories.
Though they do make posts where they share their feelings, it's very different when you get an authoritative news source telling you something is true and you believing it versus you seeing the opinion of your friend.
This dramatic change, in my opinion, is very, very good for young people.
The mechanics of Twitter and Facebook made it very easy for outrage culture to expand and for these companies that thrive off of extremism to do well.
While yes, conservatives still generate angry reactions, we're seeing less overall because companies aren't making it.
And this means ultimately bad news for the big lefty outlets.
One of the most notable being BuzzFeed.
This story from Thinknum.
BuzzFeed employee morale and CEO sink to lowest levels yet.
Company shrinks on LinkedIn.
But this has been a long time coming.
Back in August, we saw this story from VentureBeat.
BuzzFeed's tip jar may be the last dying gasp of the VC-backed news model.
The story brings up how BuzzFeed is trying to ask you for money.
They say, the digital media company on Monday plans to unveil a feature at the bottom of its news pages that allows readers to donate between $5 and $100.
The donation feature asks readers to help us report to you and calls upon them to join a community that will shape the future of BuzzFeed News.
Contributors will get timely updates on big investigations and new programming from BuzzFeed News, a person with the program said.
If successful, it could be a prelude to a membership program with more perks, that person said.
And I think that's somewhat respectable.
They want to make sure the news is still free and available, but they do need money to survive.
This shows us a couple things.
The original model they had is failing, and they need money.
But more importantly, it's going to show us how they will side with the audience.
That's what I was told to do when I worked for Fusion.
Side with the audience.
If BuzzFeed is relying directly on your donations, then they're going to need to get you involved.
And it means if they take the wrong stance or have the wrong opinion, Or even if their reporting is offensive and factual, they could lose money.
And I have felt that sting too.
The difference being, I'm an individual.
The things I talk about are what I care about, and I'm not dependent upon people donating to my platform.
When people donate to me on PayPal or other platforms, it's a safety net to make sure that if the traditional business models I'm using, like YouTube ads and other sponsors I have for the channel, if those don't work, Then I need your support.
But that's only an if.
It's the plan B that allows me to feel secure in doing what I do.
BuzzFeed, on the other hand, just laid off tons of their staff.
They have to make editorial decisions about what they cover.
So instead of looking at the opinions of one or two people, you're looking at an organization that is actively choosing to present information in a certain way because they need your money because they are laying off their staff.
I will never lay myself off.
I'm going to keep producing content even if I go broke, because this is what I do.
It's for fun, it's for work, it's what I'm passionate about.
But people who work at BuzzFeed have a job, and they're doing that job so they can go hang out at the bar on the weekends.
The company needs to make a company decision about the narratives they push to ensure that they bring in cash.
And you can see this with companies like the ACLU.
The ACLU used to believe in free speech.
Well, they've walked back on that.
They're now supporting rather regressive positions because they got a massive influx of donations after they opposed Donald Trump's moratorium on certain countries traveling to the U.S.
Now look, it's absolutely fair to criticize me or BuzzFeed because you think that we're beholden to our donors.
But I don't know who my donors are for the most part, or what their opinions are, I should say, and I just talk about what I think is important.
It's very different when an editorial board sits around at a table, disagreeing with each other and deciding what the narrative needs to be.
I don't know what the right answer is.
I certainly think you can criticize me or any other personality who focuses on particular issues, but at the same time recognize that's an individual opinion.
You are here on my channel.
I was playing, like, I had a video from a year ago where I was playing guitar and singing, right?
I like talking about news.
I like making these videos and these podcasts, but it's just me.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
The thread I wanted to pull at is how Facebook's changing algorithm and the loss of millennials means Websites like BuzzFeed, Vox, and Vice are going to die off as they can't attract new users anymore.
They marketed on Facebook, but the audience that they're trying to get is gone.
So what do you think's gonna happen?
Do you think they will ultimately die off, or do you think they will find other ways to survive?
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going, as I said.
You can follow me on Mines at TimCast.
Stay tuned, new videos every day at 4 p.m.
Eastern, and more videos coming up on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews, starting at 6 p.m.
