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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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