There isn't much going on in the news tonight so I thought I would write a little about tech censorship and the effect it has had on this blog. As you are almost certainly aware social media has been an absolute mess this month.
I started this month with accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Parler and MeWe and I still technically have those accounts. However Parler was nuked, Gab was unusable for several weeks and I lost almost a quarter of my Twitter followers.
So, how badly did this effect my numbers for this month? Not as much as I would have thought. The numbers are down since last month (which was an outlier regardless) but given I lost hundreds of followers and had difficulty reaching hundreds more, it's pretty amazing that I was able to keep my views and income up.
However, I do fear that this might not be the case in the future. Facebook has always been the most important source of my views for this blog and if they ever decide to pull the same kind of nonsense that Twitter has done then my views will probably never recover, even if Parler comes back and I get a bunch of new Twitter followers. It's responsible for the vast majority of my views and is why my blog did ok this month despite Parler getting nuked and Twitter banning or driving away a huge number of users.
This leaves me in a precarious position. If Facebook does go full fascist and start banning anyone to the right of Mao then my blog is essentially done. I might get a few views from what is left of Twitter and Gab but it won't be anything near what I have gotten from Facebook.
Will that happen? I don't know. I tend to not rock the boat on Facebook with my page as, unlike my other accounts, I don't crosspost my tweets there. I basically only posts links to this blog which means they should have little reason to ban me. But I also see the direction the tech companies are going and it is not a good sign at all.
My Twitter account is probably at a much higher risk to be banned. I have been shadowbanned on their before and was forced to verify my account once. Given how much of a ghost town Twitter is these days and the danger of being doxxed by some dangerhair blue checkmark social justice warrior getting banned would honestly not be that bad since Twitter was never a major source of my views.
Still, if you care enough to be reading this there is something you can do if you only follow me on Twitter or Facebook. I don't think my Gab account is going anywhere. Unlike Parler, they were pretty hardened against attacks from big tech. The main problem with Gab is some of their user base actually is the crazy far-right extremists that the media claims are everywhere, it's not a place for the easily offended. I'm @politicswarblog there if you have an account.
Perhaps though this is just paranoia. Unlike a lot of people that get banned from Twitter, I don't engage when confronted by the Twitter pile on. Just last month I made fun of Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke and it went viral on the left. It didn't effect me at all because I just blocked everyone that tried to bait me into saying something stupid. I also make sure to never violate the terms of service, which are stupid but are fairly easy to follow. I am guessing if I do get banned it will be by the point the service is no longer relevant. And again, all I post on Facebook is links to my blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment