Over the past decade I have been suspended, blocked, banned, or shadow banned by many of the mainstream social media and blogging platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Mastodon and Medium. And I’ve been black listed on blockchain sites like Steemit & Hive. The few remaining ones I was allowed to post on uncensored have gone downhill to the point where there are barely any users left – Blurt, Bastyon, and Flote for example have all gone nowhere.
The only two platforms I’m still posting on as of August 2023 are WordPress.org and Blogger after giving up all social media. My real impediment to spreading the word, or any words, is being shadow banned by Google. That has taken the annual hits on my blog down from a peak in 2017 of over four million, down to an all time low of under 58k in 2022 – a decline of 98.5%!
Hits on my blog from 2006 to 2022 (the 2019 stats in grey appear to be a duplicate of 2018), and 2023 in yellow is an estimate.
These days so few people are seeing anything I post I sometimes wonder, "is it worth bothering?" But then, almost as soon as that doubt creeps in, I get fired up again and think "YES IT IS, NEVER GIVE UP!"
I'm going to continue to post whatever I feel inclined to, as I always have, now with my longer posts on WordPress and shorter posts on Blogger. My main change of attitude is that I'm going to ignore the hit counters, and I'm no longer going to distract myself by attempting to increase the traffic by posting links to my posts on Facebook or anywhere else. It's too bad if nobody sees them!
And if Google ever decide to ban me on Blogger, which they certainly could do (although I hope they don't, because it's still my favorite blogging platform in many ways - quick, convenient, and I like most aspects of the design), then, and only then, will I set up a new #2 blog on a different platform and redirect the www.sift.co.nz URL there instead. But unless that happens I plan to continue posting on Blogger, and ignore the fact that I'm using my enemies own platform. (But I do keep backups of all my posts)
