User behavior shifts over time. When I was at The New Yorker you’d see that a tiny but meaningful % of users used share tools. Even with that decline the % in this story is ‘good’ especially if you assume 40% of their traffic are probably bots.

What it also misses is: even if someone doesn’t use share tools, they do act as an call-to-action that can inspire people to share - though they may copy the url and not use the button.

It’s a tough game.