This should be illegal for any dominant platform IMO, external links are the lifeblood of a free and open internet. They are the only release valve from the walled gardens the inevitably result from human power-law clustering and network effects.
A sample.
"What Facebook Did to American Democracy" — The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-...
"Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World" — The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/facebook-democrac...
"Mark Zuckerberg Has Set Our Democracy on Fire" — The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/zuckerberg-facebo...
"Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?" — The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zucke...
"Facebook harms children and weakens democracy: ex-employee" — BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58805965
“Fighting Digital Disinformation” - Warren for Senate https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/fighting-digital-disinform...
They all have a vested interest in Facebook usage dropping.
I think most media outlets should look at LWN as a model for sustainability: niche stories, hyper focused on what their audience is interested in.
To be clear: the curation social media does is perverse, because it bubbles the worst, most salacious and panicked stories to the top. Reading comments and quotes without having the context of the article itself is a great way to wind up angry and misinformed. If you're a news outlet, designing your news coverage to support this is unethical, and results in a cultural death spiral. Hyper-focusing on what your audience is interested in is good business, but bad journalism, and freedom of the press is enshrined in law so they can inform us rather than just give us the content we crave.
As opposed to the mainstream media which… bubbles the worst, most salacious and panicked stories to the top.
Social media did not invent or seemingly run by the aphorism "if it bleeds it leads". If anything, it was a few decades late to the party. At the end of the day, you can't force people to watch something they are not interested in.
I think there's a big difference between traditional newspapers and media. Traditional newspapers definitely have things wrong and are trying to sell subscriptions but "media" channels are the culprits with selling fear and hate.
NY Times Front Page - Polls Close in Turkey as Erdogan Faces Tough Re-election Fight - Want to Make your Mom Happy? Tell her she was right - As Ukraine Makes Inroads in Bakhmut, Devastation Still Reigns - He Told Followers To Starve To Meet Jesus. Why Did So Many Do It?
Washington Post Front Page - Football bonded them. Its violence tore them apart. - Erdogan’s fate in the balance as polls close in Turkey election - Zelensky, in private, plots bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows - 4 ways to reconnect with parenting joy and build a child’s emotional skills
Boston Globe Front Page - Biden pleads for Congress to take steps to curb gun violence - Power Shift: In less than a decade, the state’s electric grid must dramatically transform. It won’t be easy. - Finally, a promising new class of drugs is making its way to Alzheimer’s patients - Alleged leaker Jack Teixeira fixated on guns and envisioned ‘race war’
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CNN Front Page - Russia may have just lost four aircraft in one day. What we know - She always felt safe in San Francisco. But the streets are different now - World’s oldest dog celebrates another birthday - The rise of the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’ and how it can impact every American
Fox News Front Page - Marine veteran’s defense fund grows in just one day after being charged in subway chokehold death - Gov. Newsom facing political predicament as reparations experiment backfires - Police searching for gunman after 7 people reportedly shot in border city - NBA star appears to pull the same social media stunt that got him suspended
MSNBC Front Page - Happy mother's day to everyone — except Moms for Liberty - George Santos’ flawed attempt to emulate Donald Trump - This Eric Trump tweet yet again pushes a dangerous way of thinking - James Harden's friendship with a mass shooting survivor isn't a feel-good story
That is why facebook is rampant with people stealing others videos and reposting it on the platform.
If I don’t want X on my website, I can downrank it. Doesn’t matter if that thing is “hate speech”, “porn”, “links to other websites”, “off-topic comments”