If you’re a publisher, I’m sure you’ve been tempted to post your valuable content on Facebook to get more audience. That’s short-term thinking. Don’t do it.

Let Facebook keep the cat videos and the hashtag activism, and let publishers create their own communities around meaningful, professional content.

“Facebook … gets an unequal share of the value when publishers use it as a platform.” So says Tony Silber in Facebook as a Publishing Platform Isn’t Good For Publishers The social network is becoming a news and content network, thanks to your content..

Well of course they do.

If you’re a publisher, Facebook is not your friend and it’s not trying to keep you in business. Quite the contrary. Facebook wants all your customers to become their customers, and they want to relegate publishers to being their contract writers, vying for attention on a platform that Facebook controls.

“Facebook is playing chess, while publishers are playing checkers,” Silber continues. Or as I’ve said before, Facebook is happy to help publishers play yesterday’s business model — selling ads against articles wherever you can — while Facebook plays tomorrow’s business model, which is data. And they want the game to be played on their field.

“Facebook … [is] now more a source of news and information, grafted onto a platform that’s ideal for that purpose.”

And publishers are willingly playing along, planting the seeds of their own demise.

So if Facebook is transitioning to a content company — “quality” content in the feed has long been rewarded in the algorithm, and live video is a new priority — what does that mean for content producers? Well, yes, the audience is there, and that audience needs to be engaged. But is the loss of direct contact with the audience, the ceding of ad dollars, and the movement away from individual websites except for referrals really a good thing when considered in the long-term, secular sense? I say no.

Silber is right. Publishers have to quit being suckers and helping their opponents beat them.