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Friend,
Two giant corporations—Google and Facebook—have enormous, monopolistic
control over what people see and read on the internet.
Like the railroads in the late 1800s, which were able to crush
competition and throttle small farmers until the reforms of the
Progressive Era, these internet giants have the power to crush all but
the biggest corporations with a slight tweak of their algorithms.
That's why it sent shockwaves through our office last year when, out of
the blue and without warning, the number of visitors to our website from
Google and Facebook crashed through the floor.
We've been asked by friends whether Google and Facebook shut us down
because of our politics, and at this point, that's not a claim we can
prove. But we do know with absolute certainty that last year, in the
midst of a presidential election when readership from other sources was
increasing, our traffic from Google and Facebook suddenly fell off—and
it still hasn't recovered.
This is a huge problem. First, obviously, our mission to inform,
inspire, and spark progressive change relies on people actually seeing
and reading our work. Second, we rely on donations from our readers to
pay our staff and keep the lights on. When fewer people visit our
website, that means fewer donations.
We're working to make Common Dreams stories more shareable on social
media, build our audiences from other sources, and improve our search
engine performance, but these improvements are costly, time consuming,
and complicated. And in the meantime, we're counting on you more than
ever to help meet our fundraising goals.
Will you donate to Common Dreams and help progressive media survive?
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DONATE NOW
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With gratitude,
Aaron Kaufman
Director of Development
for the whole Common Dreams news team
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