I know this sounds a little dramatic, so an explanation is in order.
I started on social media nine years ago, all the while continuing this and (later) the other blogs and websites. I’ve used several techniques to automatically disseminate these blog posts. I’ve always had a problem with doing every post manually. Keeping the online presence i have is enough work without adding to it. It’s a question I frequently ask: is the technology working for us or are we working for the technology?
Well, Facebook, beset by woes of its own making, is going to make that harder: starting 1 August 2018, they will not permit third-party (in this case WordPress) apps to automatically post stuff like this to Facebook profiles (they will do it for Facebook pages, though.) To continue posting like i have, I would have to do it manually for each post.
At this point, except for special cases or when I’m responding to someone else’s post, I don’t plan to do that. The main reason is simple: based on the response I’ve been getting, I’m not convinced that Facebook is disseminating my automatically posted stuff very widely, either from this or my other blogs. The ideological bias of Facebook is no secret, but I’m not really convinced that my Facebook audience has, on the whole, a great deal of interest in the topics I discuss. The vast majority of the visits come from places other than social media.
I’ve always been leery of putting all my eggs in the “social media basket.” While it’s important, the problem with any social media platform is that what you put there is basically theirs, and if they don’t like it (or you) they can kick you off at will. (There are also copyright issues as well.) That’s always bothered me, and it’s doubtless cost me traffic to not migrate posting to social media. And that works both ways: any external link out of Facebook deprives them of potential revenue, and I’m inclined to think that they, struggling to maintain earnings, are doing this as a revenue preservation move.
I’ll still be sharing these posts via Twitter, which has its own problems but seems to be working at the moment. For those on Facebook who wish to continue following this blog, Twitter is an option, and there are email notifications and WordPress following as well. (I’m also on Google Plus, but that hasn’t amounted to much.) But, as former Nigerian Anglican Primate Peter Akinola used to say, all things must end someday, and this part of this blog’s story is now done.
Positive Infinity 