So with Facebook celebrating a big day today, I thought it might be useful to look back at the 15 most important dates in Facebook's history for news publishers. The Instagram buy showed publishers that when a new platform comes along that looks interesting, Facebook was happy to buy its way in. Facebook Instant Articles was at the same time a not-subtle dig on how terrible many news sites were on phones, a pure expression of the power of Facebook's ad-targeting capabilities, and a moment that, on another timeline, might have been the beginning of the end of the web as we know it. If Facebook said you were going to do live video, then damn it, you were going to do live video! As publishers adjusted to the outsized power of the News Feed algorithm in their traffic stats, many were willing to do whatever it took, even turning the most uncharismatic print reporters into videographers and TV reporters. If two separate organizations Facebook was working with had declared a story false, Facebook would label it as "Disputed by multiple, independent fact-checkers." What hasn't changed much is Facebook's outsourcing of this sort of work to news organizations - which protects Facebook from bias claims, but also shovels a lot of busy work onto publishers. January 11, 2018: Facebook says there's too much news showing up on Facebook. Read more