Search referrals to publishers have dropped by a third globally in a year, and some media bosses now expect another 43% cut over three years, according to a Reuters Institute report. The data behind the collapse is patchier than the headlines suggest.
TikTok has dropped its appeal and will pay a £12.7m fine to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, the Guardian reported on 24 September, while Bill Gates used a Sunday interview to demand mandatory AI regulation.
Search referrals to publishers have fallen by a third globally in a year, and new size breakdowns show small sites losing 60% over two years, nearly three times the decline at large publishers.
Bill Gates told NBC's Meet the Press that AI left unchecked could cause "a billion deaths" and that self-regulation is not enough, in an interview airing on Sunday 27 September.
More than 85% of people worry about the impact of online disinformation and 87% say it has already harmed their country's politics, according to an Ipsos survey commissioned by UNESCO, which presented a seven-principle governance blueprint on Monday.
Search referral traffic to small publishers fell 60% over two years, nearly three times the decline at large publishers, according to Chartbeat data reported exclusively by Axios.
Google search referrals to news sites have fallen by a third globally in a year, and some publishers are now openly discussing cutting Google off altogether.
Google's AI search features are pushing referral traffic to news sites off a cliff, and the tools the industry is betting on to replace it are small, experimental or both.
False claims about the Southport attacker reached 155 million impressions on X in under two weeks, according to a July 2025 parliamentary report. The riots that followed showed how disinformation networks turn a lie into street violence.
A new practitioner guide sets out a four-step method for mapping coordinated disinformation networks. Investigators, it argues, should stop chasing individual false posts and start looking at the infrastructure behind them.
Search referrals to news sites have dropped 33% globally in a year, according to Chartbeat data, and some publishers are now considering cutting Google off entirely.
Search referrals to news sites fell 33% globally in the year to November 2025, according to Chartbeat data cited in the Reuters Institute's 2026 trends report, and publishers now expect to lose another 43% over three years.
The Online Safety Act does not cover the algorithmic amplification of misleading content that is harmful but not illegal, MPs on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said in a report published on 11 July 2025.
More than 85% of people worldwide worry about the impact of online disinformation, and 87% say it has already harmed their country's politics, according to a Unesco-commissioned Ipsos survey of 8,000 people in 16 countries.
Black and Latino teenagers report stronger skills at detecting online disinformation than their white peers, particularly on race-related content, according to a study published in the journal New Media & Society.
Search referral traffic to small publishers fell 60% over two years, according to Chartbeat data reported by Axios, nearly three times the decline at large publishers. Media leaders surveyed by the Reuters Institute expect search referrals to drop another 43% over the next three years.