It's The End Of The Social Media Era Of Journalism As We Know It
Ever-diminishing returns and increasingly toxic environments have turned once-promising platforms for news and entertainment into steaming trash heaps.
Happy Thursday, dear readers.
I’ve been thinking about a Twitter thread that I saw last week from
’s Emily Dreyfuss about the closing of BuzzFeed News and the rapid decline of Twitter as a place where people could reliably get information on breaking news events.
The thread, in full:
Millennial journalists who took 4/20 off waking up to the realization that the social media era of journalism ended yesterday.
What a way to go out, not with a bang, but with a revoked imaginary cerulean check mark and the inevitable recognition that giving news distribution to platform companies with only one goal ($) was never going to be sustainable.
At least Gen Z journalists already felt in their bones that the hybrid of old business models plus the internet made no sense. They might come out of this mess fine in. It's we millennials and Gen Xers who have been clinging to a version of news media that actually died long ago.
Before anyone pings me to ask if I will write this as an op-ed in 1000 words for $150, no. Sorry. I'd rather give it away for free on my newsletter than go through the mortification of signing up for your legacy payment system to get so little $ it won't buy a meal for my family.
yOU'lL bENefit fRom the EXpoSure, they cried into the wind, as the sand castles of news empires crumbled into the sea.
I met a traveler from an antique land / Who said, "Look upon my works, ye mighty and despair, for it is all disappearing into the void of unpaid server bills, and faded newspaper print!" History blows in the wind.
Semafor’s Ben Smith (who led BuzzFeed News between 2012 and 2020) offered a similar sentiment in his April 20th column, “The end of the BuzzFeed era in news”:
[T]he end of BuzzFeed News also signals a vast shift in digital media that those of us who live inside it are feeling intensely right now, the end of one era and the beginning of another.
Peretti had built BuzzFeed into a traffic juggernaut by being among the first to see the rising social web. But BuzzFeed never found a new path when that trend turned against us — when consumers found their Facebook feeds toxic, not delightful; when platforms decided news was poison; and when Facebook, Twitter, and the rest simply stopped distributing links to websites.
It’s that last line I quoted from Smith’s piece that sums up one of the bigger problems: Facebook, Twitter, and the rest simply stopped distributing links to websites
Facebook used to be a great place to get referral traffic; Twitter, not so much. Still, it’s only gotten worse as the platforms underwent the enshittification process.
In just the past few weeks, Twitter’s Elon Musk stripped journalists and news outlets of verification badges in an effort to turn the site into a pay-to-play hellhole. Verification used to mean that the person posting something was who they claimed to be. When my account was verified in 2015 or so1, it involved me having to send a scan of my driver’s license to Twitter. Now, anyone willing to pay Musk $8 per month gets "verified" (they do not actually verify your identity) and
For whatever reason, Twitter’s Elon Musk has decided to implement platform policies that punish users for linking to outside websites (like this newsletter, for instance!) in what will ultimately be a doomed effort to turn Twitter into an “everything” app where content simply lives on Twitter. That… is not what journalists/bloggers/content creators/whatever want.
Add in that Musk is using Twitter to carry out his weird little grudges (see the below note from
), and you can see why journalists and content creators have become wary of the platform. Musk has also been on a censorship spree since taking over Twitter (despite his "free speech" claims).Oh, and also, Musk's really been feeding into a lot of really right-wing, anti-trans stuff lately. Just the other day, a former MMA fighter named Jake Shields posted a tweet asking if there should be public executions of people who support transition-related health care for minors. The top responses from “verified” accounts were filled with people responding, “Yes!” and “I’ll volunteer as executioner!” Musk and his team didn’t suspend the accounts involved but did try to hide evidence.
Is social media over? In a sense, it’s been over. But it’ll still be around, and I’ll keep trying to find a space that works for me.
I’ve got accounts on Mastodon, Bluesky, Post, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and even a Facebook page. Twitter was always the social network that felt most like “home” to me (and it was the one I was “best” at). In Twitter’s current state, though, I can’t justify using it at all anymore. I’d long said that I’d keep using it until it was no longer worth it. If I was honest with myself, that would have been a few months ago. But Musk’s head-first dive into anti-trans conspiracy-mongering sealed the deal for me.
Oh, and Substack Notes! You can keep up with me there, too. If you’re subscribed to the newsletter, you should automatically be following me if you check that out.
Until next time, folks.
- Parker
I had a job at Upworthy at the time. It was always an odd fit for me, but I learned a lot about social media during my time there. At one point, a Twitter representative reached out to someone at the company to ask if the site’s writers would like to be verified to prevent impersonation. It was helpful for that purpose, but it didn’t result in my posts being automatically weighted higher than posts from accounts that hadn’t been verified.
$150 for 1000 words was the standard rate back in 1990 if you wanted ‘exposure’, just to show how bad rates are now. That’s $231 in money today.
Who would've thought unregulated social media platforms whose only incentive is profit would suffer a decline? A real head-scratcher, it is.