Populist British news website Politicalite says it is under attack by a combination of algorithm changes and unfair suspensions by the big tech Masters of the Universe.
Breitbart News previously covered Google’s decision to suspend advertising services to Politicalite, and Facebook’s suspension of the site’s page amid a crackdown on supporters of Tommy Robinson following the release of “Panodrama,” Robinson’s undercover exposure of bias at the BBC. PayPal also recently suspended service to the website.
Over the weekend, the website’s Twitter account claimed that Facebook suspended its editor-in-chief, Jordan James over a post the platform had previously reviewed and approved.
The post was a link to a story by James Goddard, a British yellow vest activist who was arrested for calling an anti-Brexit politician a “Nazi.” His post questioned why nothing similar had happened to David Lammy, a left-wing politician who regularly uses the label to attack his political opponents.
In a comment for this story, Politicalite editor-in-chief Jordan James said that recent algorithm changes at Facebook were also hurting the website.
“Facebook’s new newsfeed changes related to so-called ‘fake news’ are totally killing us on FB – we’ve seen our reach, traffic and likes drop significantly in the past week,” said James, who also said that all of Politicalite’s share data now appears to be blocked by the social network.
Facebook recently announced a new policy called “Click-gap,” in which websites that are disproportionately popular on the platform compared to the wider web would see their reach reduced.
Here’s how Facebook explained it in a blog post:
Click-Gap looks for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on News Feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.
Facebook’s new policy will favor established websites over new upstarts like Politicalite. Websites that have not built up a bank of citations and links outside of Facebook are going to be punished in the new policy.
It also favors establishment websites, which are typically the most-cited sources on the leftist-dominated “encyclopedia,” Wikipedia. The high number of citations and links to establishment sources on Wikipedia pages – which frequently appear at the top of Google search results – will favor those websites in Facebook’s new algorithm.
Breitbart News has reached out to Facebook for comment.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
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