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Friend—I wanted to make sure you saw this crucial email we sent yesterday.
Friend,
On May 4 of last year, with no warning and for no apparent reason, the number of readers visiting Common Dreams via Google search results dropped like a stone.
One day, everything was normal—some of the strongest and steadiest traffic growth we’d ever seen. The next day, the number of visitors tanked.
Then a similar drop happened in traffic from Facebook on August 8, just as the presidential election was heating up and traffic to our website should have been surging.
We don’t fully understand what happened or why. But it’s clear that these corporations changed their algorithms in a way that significantly reduced the number of people who were finding their news on Common Dreams.
We don’t advertise or sell user data, but fewer readers ultimately means fewer donations, and even now, months later, our numbers have yet to recover. This is not only a massive hit to our mission-driven news operation. If this continues, our very survival is at risk.
We simply can’t succeed in our mission to inform, inspire, and spark progressive change as long as we’re losing readers from the biggest sources of web traffic on the internet. That’s why we’re coming to you now as part of our Spring Campaign to help make sure we have the resources to survive this blow to our readership.
Will you donate to help support independent, progressive media? We need you now more than ever.
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