So, I have a Facebook Page with around 1 million real likes / followers. When I have no reach penalty, I get between 100,000 and 300,000 reach per post. When Facebook decides to give my Page a penalty, that number usually drops to 30,000 - 50,000 reach. I never figured out what causes these penalties. The only thing I know is that sometimes they seem to last 1 day, sometimes 7, and sometimes 30.
Penalties aside, on the morning of Friday, June 9th, my Page was automatically switched to the New Pages Experience. Ever since the switch was made, my reach has dropped to 5,000 – 30,000 per post. This is catastrophic. Since 2014, I’ve never seen such a low reach. Engagement is basically non-existent. So, since Friday, I’ve removed pretty much all new posts that I posted on Facebook because they are useless and are not seen by any of my followers.
If nothing is done on the Facebook side to solve the problem, it's clearly the final nail in the coffin for my Page. But then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional. External links are an exit to the Facebook News Feed, their primary source of revenue. Facebook doesn’t get paid and probably lose money from links. They much rather give reach to images, videos and reels, which keep people in the Feed and generate revenue. And Zuckerberg often blamed media companies for tarnishing the reputation of his platform because of fake news and disinformation, so by dramatically cutting the reach to external links, he essentially killed two birds with one stone.
But there’s one thing Zuckerberg is forgetting: news and viral content are what attracted people to Facebook in the first place. Without this, I doubt Facebook has any meaningful future. People are not interested in looking at thirty photos of aunt Karen’s new vacuum cleaner. People like to be entertained, read short articles and look at pictures. Sure, the younger generation might prefer short videos like TikTok and Reels, but they don’t even represent 10% of Facebook’s total users. So, I think by losing articles and external links, they will be losing much of their users.
But Zuckerberg has much bigger plans with Meta and the Metaverse. Maybe he wants to get rid of Facebook after all. Now that his company is worth more than half a trillion dollars, he can take much bigger risks without having to fear monetary losses. With the presence Facebook has in the world and its 1.9 billion daily users, it will be relatively easy for him to promote his new Metaverse platform when the time comes. According to Facebook, Apple and many other tech giants, the future is the Metaverse, so the race to build the best one has begun. And I think once the Metaverse is brought to life, Facebook’s existence will be meaningless.
So, I would say, if you have a Facebook Page and care about it, prepare for the worst, as reach might never come back.
[edited by: janvitos at 9:09 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2023]
