Remember a few months ago, when Facebook announced that it was going all in on messenger bots and video? Well, do you remember how we predicted that would mean plenty of changes to publishers and pages who count on Facebook?

IT HAS BEGUN!

Yesterday, Facebook announced that it would be tweaking the algorithm to give more weight to things shared by “friends and family” than what publishers share. This means organic reach and referral traffic are likely to decline, no matter how many fans a page has.

Contently has helpfully published a list of the seven ways that this is going to be The Worst Thing Ever. (Since they’re a company that helps brands publish good content, you can see how they might be adversely affected. They’re similarly unthrilled by the new branded content tag.)

Other publishers are, well, not thrilled, but not surprised. After all, it has happened before. Fast Company could easily pull this article from April 2015 off the shelf and rerun it with just a few updates. Ditto this Facebook Business post from last November. And as re/code reminds us, Facebook has always been happy to take advertiser money to boost reach.

So what should you do about these new changes? Well, in spite of the hot takes likely to be springing up on social media over the next few days, no one really knows what this will mean just yet.

And if someone doesn’t want to let the topic go? Distract them by bringing up Twitter’s new dashboard and stickers.

About the author:
Tara Saylor is a communications manager by day, grad student by night and curious all the time. She is also a web nerd and recovering copywriter. Tara focuses on the channels that enable communication and using metrics to improve communication effectiveness. She tweets about communication and combines as @AnokheeTara.

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