Facebook was the reason that medium-sized websites had to close. This is how the falsified metrics affected and having to upload the videos to Facebook.
For years, websites have been constantly uploading their audiovisual content to Facebook. It was said to be the best, and almost the only, way to grow and generate advertising revenue, but recently it was revealed to be a complete scam, with falsified metrics and hardly any actual advertising income. Adam Conover, a former employee at College Humor, commented on his Twitter account about how the manipulation of Facebook's metrics affected the company.
Many metrics but zero benefits
As Adam Conover says: “ My former employer, CollegeHumor, sent all its content to Facebook. To beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so CH pivoted to FB. So did Funny or Die, and many others. The result: a once-thriving internet comedy industry was decimated. A $40 million fine is ridiculous. Shut down Facebook.”
When I joined College Humor, fans watched the videos on OUR WEBSITE. That means we sold the ads and controlled the metrics. We had an excellent ad sales team and created custom videos for major brands. YouTube served primarily to drive traffic to the web. It was a real business! We posted links to FB, of course, but the links led to our website! I specifically remember the fateful day someone said, 'You have to look at the numbers native videos get on Facebook. They are incredible!'. It was too good to pass up! So, we started posting videos natively on Facebook.
The problem: there was no way to monetize. In fact, instead of viewers visiting OUR website and seeing ads, Facebook's model was to CHARGE US to reach our fans. Site traffic plummeted. So did ad rates, and therefore video budgets. Our FB views were incredible! But now we know they were a lie. The result: the beautiful ecosystem of independent comedy websites that represented a new, emerging middle class of content creators shrank and in many places collapsed. All because of Facebook's fake viewer data. Oh, and all the other shady stuff they did. Some facts: YouTube wasn't the internet-devouring behemoth it was back then. It's quite possible that YouTube eviscerated the business in exactly the same way. But at the time, we thought it was pretty obvious that the real change was to move to Facebook.
Source: Adam Conover's Twitter