You may recall that three weeks ago I posted a piece about my experience of Facebook taking down one of my posts, for allegedly breaching their rules: apparently I was making a misleading attempt at attracting likes and followers for my blog with that post. Having already had one post removed by them they also took that one down within ten minutes of my sharing it. Although I challenged both decisions they have neither done me the courtesy of a reply, or even an acknowledgement, and neither post has been reinstated.

This has got me thinking. I’ve always considered blogging to be the most social of social media, but like most bloggers I use some of the others to make people aware of what I’m doing: I have a Facebook page for the blog (link in the right hand column), share my posts on what used to be called Twitter, and although I have done nothing else there in years I still a link to share new posts on Tumblr, if you have heard of it. I’m not an influencer – far from it! – yet those are the people whose posts go out of their way to attract attention, so why are theirs allowed but mine aren’t? You don’t have to look around for the answer to that, do you? Obviously, the big tech sites make money out of those pathetic cretins but will never get rich off the views my posts attract. So why would they interfere with my meagre efforts?

After I wrote that piece many commented about similar experiences. At least I felt that I wasn’t alone, but it is a little scary that they exercise such control without seemingly any human involvement: the algorithms run by their bots don’t have a real brain, do they? My thoughts then went further, and I have been looking at social media in a more general way. There are the big players: X-Twitter and Facebook, who between them wield huge power in terms of what we see. X used to give us a feed of everything posted by those we follow, in chronological order, but these days I’m not so sure that still applies, and they seem much more inclined to force on us the latest inane ramblings of their owner (I muted him). Facebook has always just offered a selection: I am frequently surprised to see posts in my feed that are five or six days old, and I often visit my friends’ pages and find that they have shared things which just didn’t appear for me. Why? It can’t be that hard for them to just give us everything and let us filter what we want to see, can it?

I’ve also been reconsidering my use of these sites. I’ve been on Facebook since 2013, just before I retired, and created my page in 2018 when it stopped allowing direct posts to friends. That may have been a kind of advantage as I now have a potentially larger audience, not that viewing stats would show it! I joined Twitter in 2011, and for a few years used it a lot: there were a group of like-minded followers with whom I had some great ‘chats,’ and a lot of laughs along the way. But it soured, many of those moved away from it, and I only really use it now for posting links to my blog and for live score updates from my football teams when they are playing: the BBC and Sky don’t pay much attention to Leyton Orient or Dover Athletic! I started on Tumblr around the same time as a couple of friends were on it, and linked my blog to it, but they have moved on and I hardly ever visit it. Maybe I should!

The real problem for me is what Twitter has become since Moron Musk bought it, rebranded it as the meaningless X, and opened it up to racists, conspiracy theorists, extreme right wing views, and generally made it a hate-filled, unwelcoming place. A couple of days ago a good friend of mine from my work days announced that she was leaving the site, for the same reasons I have just given, and I have to say that I’m seriously thinking of doing the same. The only thing which is stopping me is those football updates!

But are there any alternatives? About eighteen months ago I set up an account on Threads, but have hardly used it. Maybe I’m wary of it being owned by Meta, who also own Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp? Will I find myself being censored there too – I use the others as well, so should I be paranoid about what they are watching and listening in on? I have seen several news reports in recent weeks for something called Bluesky, which is positioning itself as a friendlier alternative to X. Let’s face it, it couldn’t be any nastier, could it!

So I’ve decided to actually do something positive for once. It’s not that I don’t have time, is it, as I’m retired and can spend my days however I want. I looked into WP’s settings for blog post sharing, and they have automatic links that you can set up for both Threads and Bluesky. Maybe time for a test, methinks. So I linked this to Threads and have signed up to Bluesky and done the same there. They claim to have more than 13m users – small beer compared with the others, but they have reported many new accounts opening in recent months. I haven’t yet found many on there that I can follow, but in all honesty I only set it up yesterday and haven’t spent long playing with it, so time will tell. If there are feeds from those two football teams that would be another nail in the X coffin! This is the first post which I will be sharing across my new full set of Facebook, X, Threads, Tumblr, and Bluesky, and I’ll be interested to see what happens – if anything! I’ll keep you posted on what transpires, and if this survives another Facebook bot attack.

Do you use any or all of these to share your blog posts? If so, I’d be grateful if you’d share your thoughts in the comments about your experiences with them – are you thinking of leaving any of them, or joining new ones? And are there others I could try? Anyone who suggests Trump’s Lies Anti-Social will be taken out and tortured!

If you are on any of them do find and follow me there and I’ll do the same for you: the more the merrier!