radical-bidenism:

Nobody talks about it even though it’s something every smart anti-social media crusader should know, but Facebook almost singlehandedly killed off and consolidated an entire thriving market of independent online entertainment companies virtually overnight. 

Yall ever wonder what happened to Funny or Die? Cracked? The Onion? People wrongly conclude that their rapid decline and eventual phasing out was caused by mismanagement/decline in quality, but in truth this only began to happen after they were already hemorrhaging talent and money. 

The truth is that back in 2016-2017, Facebook started updating its code to make it the website host for videos, therefor netting the advertising clicks from videos. They would do things like make unaffiliated fandom facebook pages to host videos from these independent content makers so that clicking on them would bring people back to facebook instead of the original company sites. With these websites now bleeding views, Facebook then offered them deals that promised them massive views and revenue through a shared monetization scheme, but - and heres the kicker - only if said websites forfeited their rights to host their content on their independent websites.  

Facebook was essentially offering these companies the chance to act as independent contractors whose payment was getting the right to profit off the content and views Facebook was responsible for stealing. Facebook promised the deal was worth it, and gave off all sorts of projections for how much money these sites could make… only it turns out that Facebook’s projections and viewcount numbers were completely fraudulent, and these independent sites got scammed out of their advertising revenue causing them to tank. 

Facebook was forced to pay a measly 40 million in damages, an insignifiant sum to cover the cost of an entire sunken industry. 

(via untruthsteller)