Report: Conservative Publishers Lost 1.5 Billion Facebook Pageviews Since Trump Won
Facebook has never been particularly conservative-friendly. However, as the late evening of Nov. 8, 2016 turned into the early morning of Nov. 9 and it became clear Newsweek wouldn’t be using that “Madame President” cover after all, things took a definite turn for the worse.
How bad has it gotten? Well, two heads of conservative publishers — including our own Floyd Brown — say they’ve lost 1.5 billion Facebook pageviews since Trump won.
And no, I didn’t accidentally hit the “b” instead of the “m.”
Those numbers come from The Gateway Pundit, who recently spoke to Brown and another top publisher in the right-wing opinion sphere.
“Floyd Brown is a conservative author, speaker and media commentator. In 2008 Floyd launched Western Journal which quickly became one of the top conservative websites in America,” they write.
“By 2016 Floyd’s organization of Western Journal and other conservative websites under his umbrella had more than a billion page views. Since 2016 Floyd’s organization lost 75% of its Facebook traffic.”
“Likewise, we spoke with Jared Vallorani from Klicked Media. Jared traveled to Washington DC with The Gateway Pundit and website owners at 100%FedUp in June to discuss Facebook targeting against conservative publishers with Republican lawmakers,” they report.
“Jared told The Gateway Pundit his organization Klicked Media, which hosts over 60 conservative websites, lost 400 million page views from Facebook in the last six months if you compare the traffic to a year ago.
“Jared said, ‘We lost 70% to 80% of our traffic if you compare January to May 2017 vs Jan to May 2018.’
“If you combine the total number of pageviews lost by just these two conservative online publishers you are looking at a loss of over 1.5 billion pageviews from Facebook in one year.”
And keep in mind, that’s just two publishers. That means pageviews are down way more than 1.5 billion on the conservative side of the coin.
The Gateway Pundit called this a “bloodbath.”
All we’ll say is that we tracked the situation using our own data and found that liberal outlets hadn’t faced the same sort of drops. That means that there was almost certainly a political element to this.
That might have been on the mind of President Trump when he said, a few weeks ago, that “too many voices are being destroyed” by social media and compared it to “Fake News.”
Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others…….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2018
…..Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police. If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed. I get used to it and watch with a grain of salt, or don’t watch at all..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2018
….Too many voices are being destroyed, some good & some bad, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Who is making the choices, because I can already tell you that too many mistakes are being made. Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2018
“Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!” Trump said.
That’s apparently not going to happen anytime soon.
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