The Australian Government is currently negotiating with social media giants like Facebook to get them to pay for news content. We don’t get a say in this policy, and we are unlikely to get any of the money from it – it mostly goes to the huge media companies like Nine and News Limited.
But, as part of their negotiating tactics, Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, Google) have been actively “downranking” content from news companies. Basically, they have mucked with the algorithm so that news content is seen less often than other posts.
That means that even if you follow the New England Times page on Facebook, you will not see most of our posts in your feed.
It’s part of their attempt to make it clear they don’t need news content, and don’t need to pay for it – in Canada, which also tried to make social media giants pay for news, all news content has been completely blocked on Facebook and Instagram for the last 3 years.
For now, all of our content is there, but you mostly won’t see it unless you go looking for it. And whether we like it or not, around 40% of our readers come to us via Facebook, so this “downranking” action hurts us significantly. While we would love for everyone to subscribe to the daily emails instead, we do understand that for right now, Facebook is where most people are.
Where it really hurts at the moment is that it means most people are not seeing the call out posts for each day’s category in Best in the New England. That hurts local businesses, and that’s not ok.
We’re going to try a couple of different things from our side to see if we can get things up a bit, but we would really like it if you can pitch in and help. It won’t cost any money, just a few seconds of your time.
If you’re on Facebook and see the 6am post of that day’s category, or any of the other posts throughout the day, please just share it. Share it to your page, share it to a local group – it doesn’t matter really, just share it. You can also just click the link in the daily email, of go to the home BITNE page to see the day’s category, and then share the link in your own post.
Liking and commenting also helps make the algorithm happy and more people may see the post.
The same goes for our news – the more you like, comment and share, the more we can overcome this downranking problem.
Hopefully, this will all be over soon.
Thank you for your help with this, and your continued support of real local news with no paywalls.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.