Social Media Better than Meta
You may or may not know that these blog posts appear automatically on various social media platforms.
I have been posting content automatically on Meta platforms, Facebook and Threads. Recently, however, Meta’s AI algorithm has been randomly blocking posts. A couple of weeks ago it blocked this post (about the Edgeworth family) on the grounds that it violated rules concerning “sexually explicit content”. Today it blocked this post (the weekly update for OJAp) on the grounds that it was identified as spam. I can see the need for an automatic screening given the huge volume of posts, but the problem is that my facebook feed is full of actual spam that gets through these filters while innocent posts get blocked. In other words the algorithm is crap. If you ask for a review of the decision, all Meta does is run the algorithm again – with the same results, which is a waste of time.
I haven’t got time to waste on such stupidity so I will shortly be deactivating automatic posts to Facebook and Threads; these generate very little traffic for me anyway.
There are, however, plenty of alternative ways of following this blog. You can subscribe by email or by RSS feed for a start. On other social media platforms I recommend the federated version on Mastodon here:
https://telescoper.blog/@telescoper.blog
They also appear on my personal Mastodon account here:
https://mastodon.social/@telescoper
Posts also appear on LinkedIn here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-coles-911912216/
and on my BlueSky account:
https://bsky.app/profile/telescoper.bsky.social
WordPress has just set up an automatic integration with BlueSky, on which I now have over 3000 followers, which is nice, but any one of these is better than Meta!
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This entry was posted on November 16, 2024 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Biographical with tags BlueSky, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, meta, social media, Threads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In the Dark 
November 16, 2024 at 1:39 pm
I first joined Facebook 17-18 years ago, and from the beginning it struck me as poorly designed and clumsily implemented. It offers me a lot of spammy and bizarrely inappropriate content. It went through a period of showing me “UFOs” and “alien encounter” posts, every one of which I reported for reasons that included false information, spam and, on one occasion, nudity, until the flow of that nonsense stopped. That is why I’ve never set up accounts on Threads or Instagram.
Twitter was good when I first joined in 2011, but it declined, with increasing numbers of anonymous accounts, trolls and bots. It became X, declined much further, and is now terrible. It may collapse within months, or weeks.
Mastodon seems reasonable, but is quiet.
Bluesky is currently working very well, particularly with the active switch of millions of people from X in the past several weeks.
Linkedin seemed too focused on professional activities, and seemed orientated towards workplace status. It offered me some integration with my e-mail account, which I accepted, and then it went through my old e-mails to suggest adding people as new contacts, even though I had had only the most formal interaction with most of those. I failed to turn this e-mail facility off, so I changed my e-mail address on LinkedIn to one I never use and have not used LinkedIn since.
My current favourite of all of these is Bluesky.
Perhaps other people have different experiences.
November 16, 2024 at 2:10 pm
I got more followers initially on Mastodon (mostly contacts through astrophysics & cosmology) but growth there has slowed to a standstill and BlueSky has overtaken it. I have OJAp feeds on both of them too and they’re doing OK.
November 16, 2024 at 2:33 pm
You seem to have a better Mastodon experience than I’ve had, perhaps through telling professional contacts about your presence.
Bluesky really has taken off in the past few weeks, and may continue as X collapses into a Muskian dystopia.