Thread · 2 tweets · 15 May 2019

If they had less market power in advertising newspapers could operate without them. Today that is close to impossible. For a consumer to leave Facebook might inconvenience, for a publisher to leave Facebook is an existential threat.

Newspapers are in a position in which they either cannot develop an audience at reasonable price, or they can but they have to cede the rights to them. It's essentially a sharecropping system.