It’s cool how to be a writer you can’t just write, you have to spend your whole life building audiences in sandcastles that powerful people can kick down in an instant Elsa and I spent the last year building something of our own, organically & painstakingly. Now Instagram & this. - ThreadSky

sararoseg.bsky.social • 48 days ago

It’s cool how to be a writer you can’t just write, you have to spend your whole life building audiences in sandcastles that powerful people can kick down in an instant

Elsa and I spent the last year building something of our own, organically & painstakingly. Now Instagram & this.

Reposted from Phil Lewis

TikTok says it plans to shut down site unless Supreme Court strikes down law forcing it to sell

Comments

sararoseg.bsky.social•48 days ago

Our two biggest platforms. How are writers ever supposed to make money, or have their work seen? Our livelihoods are unstable and precarious enough.

Anyway - follow @thedailytism.bsky.social on here for the love of god

sararoseg.bsky.social•48 days ago

I’m wholly aware that we’re using platforms by owned rich, powerful people. It’s all well & good to be smug about it. It’s also completely unrealistic. No, you can’t just “make your own” and have people magically show up there, that’s not how the world works. We have to be where audiences are.

sararoseg.bsky.social•48 days ago

Like, maybe writers facing massive uncertainty don’t need a good finger wagging for having operated within the bounds of reality

sararoseg.bsky.social•48 days ago

Also we are two autistic queer women - every few months we have to have an ethical dilemma about whether to stay on something that hates us or be forced out or public life & have our hard work go nowhere. I can’t imagine how many others are in our position. It’s not right. It’s not fair.

sararoseg.bsky.social•48 days ago

And I’m saying all this cringing - because I know there are MUCH bigger casualties of all this. But it’s still our passion and our livelihood. It still matters, even if it matters less than other things.

sararoseg.bsky.social•48 days ago

I have barely earned in 2 years because I’m still recovering from the loss of twitter as currency. I’m not physically well enough to go out and network and do rooms. This little digital empire is all I can do. How are we all supposed to do this overnight every few months?

andrewhickey.500songs.com•48 days ago

It does. It matters a great deal in fact.

simonjellis.bsky.social•48 days ago

It's not, the only people the "nu" media help now are the companies / shareholders / investment firms running them. The drop of blood in the water that motivates people to belittle and attack other weaker / traditionally marginsed groups also helps them make money. I am so sorry for you both.

moh-kohn.bsky.social•48 days ago

I hope replying in earnest is ok (you're autistic too so probably?)

The best advice I have seen is to build your own website (or one that can be self hosted in future if needed, eg ghost), build your own mailing list.

Treat platforms as places to direct people towards the site/list you own.

moh-kohn.bsky.social•48 days ago

I agree it's an absolutely horrible situation. They just keep fucking us over! I used to have a major (for Scotland) politics account on Facebook, would get tens or hundreds of thousands of views sometimes, all killed by the algorithm.

bobooten.bsky.social•48 days ago

It’s kinda like they’re trying to shut down independent voices. 🤔

fodderfigure.bsky.social•48 days ago

Like any of us would choose any of this if we had any viable alternatives!

eddierobson.bsky.social•48 days ago

Lol, got blocked by the guy who said "Start your own website and tell everyone to go there, it worked in the 90s"

mckelvie.bsky.social•48 days ago

Tell everyone via what method, chap.

eddierobson.bsky.social•48 days ago

This is what I got blocked for pointing out.

rubberyote.space•48 days ago

This is where I wish Mastodon was more successful overall as a platform, at least insofar as it avoids the ownership problem. Unfortunately it seems to have its own issues, including that it seems tougher to generate engagement there :/

emilyatlast.bsky.social•48 days ago

In a former life, not too long ago, I ran my own (very small) print publishing business.

SM was a way for us to reach a bigger audience and persuade them to part with some cash in exchange for some nice-smelling ink-on-paper.

The most stressful aspect was Meta constantly moving the goalposts.

1/

emilyatlast.bsky.social•48 days ago

The changes were never explained, they just happened. So we'd be countering along doing OK, and then suddenly sales would dip... even though we hadn't changed anything.

I think the point is that SM platforms are so vast, individual actors are of no consequence to the owners.

2/

emilyatlast.bsky.social•48 days ago

A friend with a similar business got very excited about 10 or 12 years ago when FB suddenly decided it wanted to give print publishers a direct route to new readers, by allowing them to also publish online via FB.

I said to him at the time that Zuckerberg could pull the plug at any time.

3/

emilyatlast.bsky.social•48 days ago

My friend told me I was being paranoid.

I'm not proud that the whole thing lasted about a year, before FB concluded they weren't making enough money from the arrangement. And pulled the plug.

Idk what the answer is. But it sure isn't huge platforms owned by a handful of billionaires.

/end

emilyatlast.bsky.social•48 days ago

(This is in no way a criticism of anyone creative who uses SM to reach their audience btw. Just thinking aloud about the inequity of the whole arrangement).

bleary.off-the-records.com•48 days ago

This is the great tragedy of the digital age. People keep making beautiful things and communities find each other, and then all that just... disappears on a whim. Seems silly to grieve about (and people will say "just move to another platform!") but there's a definite grief to it.

bronxriverdigital.com•48 days ago

Not a whim.

Because the people who own these platforms can't bear the idea of people connecting with each other in a way they can't monetize.

alexriesart.bsky.social•48 days ago

Because we all keep using platforms that arent owned by us. They are owned by rich people.

hughster.bsky.social•48 days ago

If only it were as simple as that; unfortunately community-owned platforms go down just as easily as privately-owned ones. Mastodon servers continually shut down and block each other due to interpersonal disagreements, admin burnout, admin tyranny, unaffordable costs, etc.

alexriesart.bsky.social•48 days ago

There is no perfect system. But community ownership is the only alternative to central ownership I know of.

reelpineapple.bsky.social•48 days ago

Done and Done. I feel you so much on this, it's so frustrating having to advertise your heart, gain a threshold, and then a bunch of out of touch racists go, no no don't you dare get information from places we don't like; make it go away. Fuck off.

mechazowa.bsky.social•48 days ago

The biggest thing about the folks that say “just make your own” are forgetting or don’t know that there’s a whole business called seo. Look it up folks and how corporations manipulate that as well. They push who they want and can spend millions on suppression.

bronxriverdigital.com•48 days ago

Or the fact that Google's search results are now designed to have people get an AI-based answer FROM GOOGLE and never have to click through to whatever they were searching for in the first place.

mechazowa.bsky.social•47 days ago

Yes! And half the time it’s incorrect information.

halaylah.bsky.social•48 days ago

As an artist, Im right there with you. That's why I never bothered to establish myself on TikTok, and now that Instagram is being doused with shit, I guess this is my new platform.

halaylah.bsky.social•48 days ago

Guess I need to make an official Halaylah Studios profile here in the sky.

jimrosewriter.bsky.social•48 days ago

I JUST started advertising my book on my TikTok 😒

deroldsen.bsky.social•48 days ago

Thats life for everyone. Companies do the same with the engineers, the programmers, the stockers, the fry cooks. We are disposable, purposefully replaced for the benefit of the wealthy.

thatdocphoenix.com•48 days ago

I signed a book deal based in part on my Twitter following and that previously converting into clicks and sales and then by the time it came out, most of my followers had no idea I had published anything because the reach was dead

samdownie.bsky.social•48 days ago

We don’t actually own any of the content once it’s uploaded to these sites. The site owners can do anything with it and that includes selling it and deleting it, all. It’s in the T&Cs. The only way is to have your own blog site and get people to this. This was called the usernet in the 80’s/90’s

weirdtakoyaki.bsky.social•47 days ago

Same. TikTok is my largest following accross platforms, and has been integral to my success online. To lose it like this is so awful.

authorandie.bsky.social•48 days ago

Also, Amazon. My books are there, and I hate it, but I don't see much option. Yes, yes, draft 2 digital, go wide, etc, but Amazon is the largest platform. I'm sorry about your struggles.

josettenicole.bsky.social•47 days ago

Overwhelmingly when I ask ‘where should I try to build an audience?’ For anything it’s been TikTok. Just very disheartening to see the turn all social medias have taken lately and the absolute politicalization of every one of them. TikTok had its flaws but at least artists were seen there.

linversearts.bsky.social•48 days ago

Same thing with artists too 😢

futurafoxx.bsky.social•48 days ago

I foresee a move to decentralized platforms like BlueSky and of course personal blogs again.

Growing up before social media, personal RSS feeds kept me sane.

I think that’ll be where actual real people are vs these AI hellscapes that Meta and Musk have created.

bronxriverdigital.com•48 days ago

The problem with personal blogs is that we don't really have a reliable way to direct people do them any more.

Can't count on social media platforms, and you sure as hell can't rely on SEO.

juliabazanska.bsky.social•47 days ago

Personal blogs can only be an option is you can find them. Back in the day we had forums and search engines which gave you relevant results, none of which is the case today. The Internet would have to devolve back into a model which doesn’t easily make money and I’m not optimistic that will happen.

ergofoxxxy.bsky.social•48 days ago

Most of the time it’s tik tok kicking you, and some of the time it’s the government. Tik tok hates its creators

kathuryne.bsky.social•47 days ago

Good don't cave TikTok we can use VPN to use the site

ryezuul.bsky.social•48 days ago

No no, it's not turning all success into a corporate lottery that rewards existing success, it's democratised and meritocratic maaaaan.

richkurt.bsky.social•48 days ago

I’m sorry. I feel you. But with 15 ish years and Twitter.

sjtaylor7.bsky.social•48 days ago

With the news this week I’ve been thinking should I delete my FB/Insta accounts ? but then I have no alternative to FB messenger (even though I’ve not used my FB account for 2 years ) to communicate for the little bit of work I have 😣

bigolliesnaps.bsky.social•48 days ago

I'm extremely sorry to see you and others go through this. The real issue is these platforms forcing you to engineer your living in such a way over time that people come to depend on them and when the rug is pulled that fall is a hard one.
How did we all survive before SNS(social network services)?

okwonga.bsky.social•48 days ago

Solidarity. It’s brutal.

tracyh.bsky.social•48 days ago

I can relate. It’s why I’ve always spent more time on my website rather than focusing more on Instagram (though I’m often told I should). It’s so hard to be beholden to them—the platform might disappear or become more problematic than usual. But how else do we get seen and pay the bills?

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply