Social Media Retreat Cuts News Traffic Nearly in Half

Social Traffic Drops 43 Percent Since 2020, Alarming Publishers Now Reliant on Shrinking Google Partnerships

Top news sites have seen traffic from social media drop nearly half, from 11.5% in 2020 to 6.5% in 2023, following a distancing of social media platforms from news content.
Social media giants like Facebook and Instagram have ended contracts with newsrooms and refocused around less polarizing content. X, formerly known as Twitter, has removed headlines from posts and worked to disengage from news organizations.
The media's relationship with Google has also weakened, with the tech giant laying off employees who were cooperating with journalists and developing AI tools like Bard chatbot, which do not link back to news sources, causing additional concerns for the media.
This shift in social media policy, according to some tech executives, is due to the tendency of news to generate polarized debates, along with a broader trend of disdain for the mainstream press among tech company executives.
Even as publishers depend more on Google for traffic, there have been observed declines in referrals recently, raising concerns about the future of news traffic from the platform.