Report: Following Algorithm Change, President Trump’s Facebook Engagement Dropped by 45%

by Chris Black

According to a recent report, engagement on President Trump’s Facebook posts has declined by a whopping 45% following the social network’s algorithm change announced by Zuckerberg himself via a FB post. Facebook and other social media companies, including Google owned YouTube and Twitter started a massive crackdown on their conservative users in the aftermath of President Trump winning the 2016 election, which was followed by almost a year of pressure from the left wing corporate mainstream media and the companies’ “progressive” employees, who all accused the tech behemoths of “allowing” the Donald to win the election. Back in January 2018, Facebook announced a significant change to its newsfeed algos, with Zuckerberg claiming the respective change was made in order to emphasize posts from users’ family, friends and groups, and less to brands, businesses and media. The new Facebook policy is said to promote what Facebook strives to become in the near future, i.e. a promoter of “broadly trusted” news sources, whatever that means.
A month passed since the newsfeed algorithm change, and what do you know: engagement on President Trump’s Facebook dropped by ~45%, according to an analysis made by NewsWhip, a social media analytics company. What’s very telling is that the decline in engagement has nothing to do with posting frequency, as both prior and after the algo-change, Trump posted  on Facebook at basically the same rate. Moreover, compared to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, i.e. high profile leftist political pundits, who do not appear to have suffered at all in terms of engagement lately, Trump was hit particularly hard.
Now, if you ask me, people rely too much on Facebook nowadays; the company needs to go the way of MySpace. And for those of you who think it’s bad now, it’s going to continue to get worse until a total black-out 30 days before the November election. Those who think Facebook Twitter and YouTube are going to stop their political crusade against conservatives are ignoring reality.
 
Again, not in favor of telling companies how to run, since we are free market and should be able to come up with alternatives, but if there are damages to a user, maybe it could force the algorithms to be made public. At least it would expose the bias. I saw this comparison lately: if Christian bakers can be forced to bake a cake for a wedding they don’t want to participate in (freedom of association goes down the drain), how come Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites not be forced to allow different viewpoints – particularly conservative – be discussed on their sites?! Aren’t the discriminatory bans they have implemented against conservatives in direct violation of the 1st Amendment?!
 
So anyone ready to make the change yet? Ready to tell these three to bugger off? It’s time to make a global-wide change to whatever other alternatives are agreed upon.
 
Twitter — GAB, Mastodon, Raftr, Plurk (supposed to be the most ‘twitter-like’)
YouTube — Dailymotion, Vimeo, Veoh, Metacafe, Vevo, 9GagTV, Flickr
Facebook — Diaspora, Ello, EyeEm, Path, Mind
 
(and don’t ask me, I’m clueless but willing to go with the majority decision). That is the only way. Since the beginning of time, the only real way to bring change is to vote with your feet/dollars.