👉 Background: Remember the battle between Australian media + the government vs Zuck + Facebook 2021? It led to a couple of days where Facebook banned all Australian news organisations from Facebook. Since then, we've seen Meta and Google sign a media bargaining deal with 9 Australian media outlets.

👉 What happened: Now, Australian news publishers have seen traffic from Facebook drop by around 50% since the start of this year. That means fewer eyeballs on their articles via social media and less traffic to their websites.

👉 What else: And it's not just in Australia; in the US, there are reports of media outlets seeing traffic drop by 30-40% as well. It seems Zuck is really trying to flex his brand new, UFC-ready muscles here.

What's the key learning?

💡Never build a business that's totally reliant on Facebook as a business model

💡While there was a long time where Zuck was trying to woo publishers, it's pretty clear that Meta is now trying to reduce its reliance on news for engagement in its platforms.

💡Meta has always argued that publishers needs its platforms more than Meta needs publishers. And if news publishers start to really feel the pain from lower traffic, then perhaps they may not push as hard for new, paid content deals from the Big Tech giants.

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