Facebook has been increasing their censorship of my posts so it doesn't reach my audience. I created my Facebook page in early 2014 and have built up an audience of nearly 8,000 followers. I didn't have any problems until this past year when many people mentioned that they no longer see any posts from me, including if they have notifications turned on. The same is happening to my YouTube channel.
Over the past year I've been much more vocal about controversial topics. Things that are hidden from the mainstream. I noticed that while my subscriber count is climbing on YouTube, my actual views are not, and have decreased over the past year.
On Facebook, then was a point when I had over 8k followers which have since slightly declined. While it's not a significant decrease, I struggle to actually gain more than I'm losing. I understand that people will no longer follow, but not being able to grow due to my message being censored is the most frustrating.
There is a theme of what posts Facebook limits the reach. It seems to be helpful, informative resources, most of which are links to my website, another site, or even YouTube. There is a theme of censoring the posts that expose documented information or spread helpful information. It's quite clear.
There are a plethora of reasons why they are doing this, one is that they don't want me to grow and spread the truth. But, they also are looking for me to pay them to promote my posts to actually reach my audience. If I've built an audience of thousands of people, why do I need to pay money to reach them? The same applies to YouTube (but with no clear option of paying to promote videos), as well as Twitter.
Since I am relatively new to Twitter, the censorship has been mostly nonexistent, despite struggling to grow my followers. It all comes down to YouTube since if they censor my content, it reaches less people to follow me on social media.
Due to the frustration of posting on Facebook and reaching only 60 people after an hour on some posts, I want to move away from them. I love the work I do, but when it can't reach the audience I've built for years, then I get upset. I will still post on those sites for the time being, but the thought of not reaching my loyal followers is saddening, thus one reason why I've setup an email newsletter.
I have since started using Minds and Steemit and want to see them grow to be competitors to the major social media companies. I've found both these platforms (despite being in beta) as a better way of reaching people, all without having to pay. In fact, on Steemit I managed to make more money on my second post than the YouTube video did. While I am still fairly new to Steemit, and don't have much of a following, and many comments seem to be bots, I'm hoping to see major progress very soon.
To combat YouTube, I want to built up my website. Currently all videos are hosted on YouTube and embedded on my website. I'm sure some people will suggest DTube, however this is not a viable option at this time. There is another solution coming sometime in the near future that will integrate directly with my website. The less dependent on external sources and social media the better.
I will be directing my followers over here. Hopefully we can all make a difference so these companies know they cannot silently censor people they disagree with who don't break any of their guidelines.
© Autumn Asphodel