Facebook’S Message To Media: 'We Are Non Interested Inwards Talking To You Lot Close Your Traffic…That Is The Sometime Basis Together With In That Place Is No Going Back'”

From NiemanLab, Aug. 13:

That firehose isn’t opening upwards 1 time again anytime soon.

The Australian — the Murdoch-owned national newspaper — has an interesting (and aggressively paywalled) scoop nigh Facebook today, based on comments Campbell Brown, the company’s global caput of tidings partnerships, allegedly made during a coming together amongst Australian media executives inward Sydney lastly week.

Here are the quotes attributed to Brown inward the story:

“Mark [Zuckerberg] doesn’t attention nigh publishers but is giving me a lot of leeway together with concessions to brand these changes,” Ms Brown said.
“We volition assist you lot revitalise journalism … inward a few years the ­reverse looks similar I’ll live belongings your hands amongst your dying ­business similar inward a hospice.”

I should annotation that Brown denied making the comments to The Australian (“These quotes are but non accurate together with don’t reverberate the give-and-take nosotros had inward the meeting”); I should likewise annotation that The Australian has 5 people inward the coming together corroborating them.

Much of the attending given to this flush past times Media Twitter has focused on the “doesn’t attention nigh publishers” fleck together with the work-with-us-or-die implication of the instant quote. But the flush has an attached illustration that includes an alleged Brown quote that didn’t larn into into the lastly story, together with inward some ways that’s actually the most of import one:

“We are non interested inward talking to you lot nigh your traffic together with referrals whatever more. That is the former the world together with at that topographic point is no going back.”

That’s the large reversal here, given that “traffic together with referrals” were roughly 99 percentage of what Facebook had to offering publishers over the past times half-decade or so. It was that firehose of eyeballs that led to novel editorial strategies designed for share-friendly content, every bit good every bit the idea that peradventure digital advertising could pay the bills afterwards all.

Facebook has spent most of the lastly yr reducing the total of traffic it sends publishers, get-go through unspoken tweaks inward 2017 together with hence amongst a series of announced changes inward early on 2018.... 

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