Nate Silver recounts how Facebook and Twitter once drove traffic by rewarding emotional, low-quality content, undermining analytical journalism like FiveThirtyEight’s. He shows that social media now contributes almost nothing to his Substack’s audience while Twitter’s top-engaged accounts remain extreme, partisan, and low-quality.

• Social referrals made up just 0.7% of Silver Bulletin's traffic in March despite readership growing 40% year over year, showing social media is now nearly irrelevant to his audience growth.
• Twitter/X search traffic has declined more than 50% since its late-2012 peak, per third-party data.
• Both Facebook and Twitter shifted over time from rewarding quality/expertise to rewarding emotional, low-quality, partisan content, undermining analytical journalism.
• Facebook's algorithm changes and inflated video metrics in the mid-2010s drove publishers toward clickbait while delivering shallow, low-engagement traffic.