While YouTube returns most of its profits to those who create its content, Facebook keeps all its profits for itself and its shareholders. I think this is greedy and wrong. Watch this insightful video by Derek Muller of Veritasium for details.

If you don’t feel like watching the video above, let me sum it up for you while editorializing at the same time: Facebook is reducing the number of people who see your updates. Why? Because it wants you to pay to promote them.

This is not what YouTube, Twitter and Instagram do. All those who follow or subscribe to you on those services will see each of your updates. Not on Facebook.

Facebook is desperate for profits. It will be getting most of those profits from your attention to those promoted posts, written and paid for by content creators like me who want you to see them. We hope you’ll click through to our sites via those promoted posts.

In hopes of your arrival, we place ads on our sites (like the Google AdSense ad you see above), and hope you’ll click on them. With AdSense, the ads bring us around 60 cents per click. That’s a lot less than it costs us to get you to come here via Facebook. As you can see, your attention is valuable — much more valuable than what Facebook is giving you in return.

Woe be unto sites that depend on Facebook for most of their traffic. Good luck when Facebook slows your update exposure to a trickle unless you’ve paid.

And believe me, Facebook’s rates are bordering on price gouging. Think $30 to reach 6,000 people. You’re lucky if 5% of those people click through to your site, and then less than one percent of them click on one of the ads on that site.

To hell with Facebook. Better to grow your site organically, writing your best content and consistently updating your site. I know it’s an act of faith, but I still believe if your content is good enough, you can build it and they will come.

Am I wrong?

Image and video: Veritasium