In his memo announcing the closure of BuzzFeed’s news operations, CEO Jonah Peretti acknowledged a grave mistake: He hadn’t worked out that Facebook wasn’t his friend.
Peretti, of course, put it differently. He had, he admitted, been “slow to accept that big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.” BuzzFeed, which seems to have been built for Facebook’s algorithm, had tried to precariously balance a world-class news organization on top. This week, that plan came crashing down.
The social media that BuzzFeed was built for, namely Facebook, has also started to falter. Just a
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