Updated on December 10, 2021
Time for another look at the latest bunch of updates, changes, etc. to the blog.
Goodbye, Facebook page
The main change is I’ve decided to stop updating the blog’s Facebook page. Admittedly, this isn’t the first time I’ve closed it. However, this time, it’s coming on the heels of several factors.
Facebook’s questionable business practices
Facebook’s had a lot of negative issues that have made the news over the past few years. The 2016 election, data privacy issues, etc. make their business practices look questionable.
Personal usage
I don’t heavily use my personal Facebook profile as it is, as I like using Twitter much more (and that’s my main social network). At this point, I mainly have Facebook to keep up with my family, relatives, and online friends who aren’t anywhere else, with occasional postings.
Lack of organic outreach for Facebook pages
Finally, Facebook has throttled organic outreach for those running pages. Post visibility is only available to a fraction of one’s followers, even if you pay to “boost” a post’s visibility. The webcomic The Oatmeal sums this up quite well.
Conclusion
Given all the above reasons, plus that my Facebook page never generated much traffic, I’ve decided to stop updating it. I did leave a pinned post directing those interesting in following my blog to, well, actually go to my blog, with links to the main page and the RSS feed. I also removed the Facebook and Instagram icons from the blog’s sidebar.
Unlike some who’re deciding to delete their entire Facebook profiles over the social network’s problems, I’m not planning to do that. Again, there’s the family/relative/online friends reasons above.
As for other social networks, I haven’t been inclined to try any new ones lately. It’s partly out of concern they’re either not useful, not popular, or are just a flash in the pan (see: Ello). The current “hot new social network” seems to be Mastodon. However, since it’s not as straightforward to set up as Facebook (“choose a server” alone is a roadblock to the average non-techie social media user), I expect it’ll be joining Ello in obscurity before long.
