What changed is that the views in them no longer had any durable meaning or predictive power. The necessary ingredient in news has always been conflict, this is what makes a story a story, but when you can fabricate infinite conflict by applying a hyperbolic (ideological) lens to some second hand facts, it (cheaply) produces an approximation of news, but without any importance or value because the conflict is manufactured. So-called "fake news," was less about fabricated events so much as it was about fake conflict.
Net-net, dropping mainstream news some years ago has improved my overall quality of life tremendously.