Our social dilemma: Is Facebook worth it?

I just finished watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix.

It’s worth a watch, and it was one of two final programs I wanted to watch before my subscription to the service goes dark on October 1. Our family decided to cancel the service following its marketing campaign for Cuties, which debuted earlier this month.

After watching the documentary, I find myself in a social media dilemma.

• Pageviews on our site, potomaclocalnews.com, over the past 30 days, is up 30%.
  
• We have not been able to post anything to our company’s Facebook page since August 21.
  
• Facebook says we’re not registered as a news organization.
  
• Facebook rejected my first attempt to register our site. It says it cannot verify our business telephone number.
  
• I tried again and I’ve yet to receive a response.
  
• This is despite the great help I’ve received on this issue from the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.
  
• Following our reporting on the Black Lives Matter protests at the Prince William Board of County Supervisors meetings, some took to Facebook to call for defunding us.
• I don’t know, and may never know what effect this had on the way Facebook views my business.
• I credit our page view growth to our growing list of 14,000 email newsletter subscribers, which has increased 300% since April 1.

I know Facebook is an avenue for people to find our news. Hell, I relied on it to practically build my business — especially 10 years ago, in the early days.

However, now I’m wondering what its worth to keep badgering Facebook to allow us to once again post content. Essentially, begging Facebook to let it sell ads off of our hard work.

Increasingly — and we’ve known this for years — on the internet, if you’re not paying for the service, you’re the product. Your data is being used and sold to advertisers so they can target the right ad to you at the right time.

We’ve never done this. We don’t offer “geo-targeting,” or any other type of targeting. Our content is local news, so by definition, our news is already targeted to local residents.

At Potomac Local News, you’re not the product. The news is, and that’s one reason why the number of paid subscribers to our site continues to grow.

Meanwhile, in recent months when we could post to Facebook, many of our sponsored posts for our advertising clients — none of which were political ads— were rejected. The majority of them were for community events.

Among our audience on Facebook, interaction has been declining. And, surprisingly, comments on our site — which, for years, had been nearly non-existent — are increasing in numbers.

I’m at a crossroads, and the decision I make could have a lasting effect on my business.