New study confirms: Facebook’s algorithm change is boosting liberal news sites while destroying traffic to conservative media

For weeks now conservative and independent media outlets have been screaming that Facebook and other social media giants were deep-sixing their content and dramatically curbing their reach to just a small fraction of their followers.

In every case, this has led to drops in Facebook-driven traffic by high double-digit percentages. The decline in traffic is so bad that Right-leaning sites like Rare are closing (Rare’s Facebook-viral traffic has fallen from a high of 22.5 million in 2014 to 5.5 million in February).

Is it just a coincidence? Is Facebook really just punishing conservative sites? According to a just-completed study by the Western Journal — whose own right-leaning content traffic has been greatly diminished via Facebook despite its 5.32 million “likes” and 4.58 million followers — traffic to liberal websites has increased two percent in the month since Facebook implemented its new algorithm, while traffic to conservative sites has tanked 14 percent.