Publishers becoming ‘beholden’ to social traffic and being ‘tricked’ by Facebook, warns Slate boss

The president of online publisher Slate has warned publishers to not allow Facebook to steal their voice and individuality after suggesting they are being “tricked” into creating the same style of content.

Keith Hernandez told the Mumbrella Publish conference this morning that too many publishers are “beholden” to traffic from social media, while Facebook is telling firms how videos should be made. This is leading to the creation of homogeneous content, he said.

Hernandez said Facebook’s Instant Articles is a danger to publishers. While a story may be well written, readers are often unaware of who produced the story.

“Half of our audience comes direct to slate.com, in my prior life at Buzzfeed it was 20-25%, and when you talk to other publishers it’s in the low 20s or high teens,” he said.