I’ll never forget my total and complete misunderstanding of Reddit policy.
Yes, once upon a time, I got shadow-banned on Reddit for being an evil and pernicious spammer. But, in my defense, I had never been on Reddit before, didn’t understand its unique sub-culture, and frankly had a very different understanding of what actually constituted spam.
You see, my understanding of spam was content that was uninvited, off-topic, and often involved some sort of solicitation. Reddit adds to the definition pretty much anything that could be considered self-promotion.
So, anyone who’s familiar with Reddit probably has a good idea of what happened. With a freshly created, zero karma Reddit profile, I went to the r/politics subreddit and posted a link to a blog article I had written (this was before their seemingly impenetrable white list). And, of course, the “front page of the internet” found the time to smack a lowly blog writer out of Reddit existence.
While Reddit is perhaps the most militant social media website when it comes to this sort of thing, it’s a pretty typical approach across the board. Self-promotion is considered spammy, looked down upon, and often silenced to one extent or another.
And while I’m the first to recognize that over-the-top self-promotion is highly nauseating, the whole approach bothered me. The more I thought about it, the more it actually started to frustrate me. I’ll tell you why.
On Reddit specifically, if I had copied and pasted the blog article and published it as a post, everything would have been fine. It’s the same on most other social media sites. Short-posts, long-posts, comments, gifs, memes…you name it you can post it, and it usually won’t be considered spam as long as it stays on the site (even if it’s off-topic or uninvited, that’s just trolling).
So, is the goal here to police quality, keep things on topic, or even to actually cut down on the self-promotion? Or is it to police external links and keep the conversation from going to a different site? It seems to me the status quo is designed so that Social Media sites get your intellectual content on their site for free, their SEO boosted off your creativity for free, and their website promoted across the internet for the freely-submitted content of its users.
You see, as a writer, I see the written word as having both extrinsic and intrinsic value. It takes time and effort to create something that’s actually worth reading. But Social Media, whether purposely or not, has created a modern scenario where the value of the written word has decreased dramatically.
Not only has Social Media convinced its users to offer their insights and content for free in exchange for what usually only amounts to internal relevance, but, when the reward is often little more than likes and shares (a reflexive and often emotional response), we become disincentivized to create substantive content.
This is why local newspapers are failing, journalists are out of work, and news sites often devolve into click-bait factories. This is why modern society, with more information at its fingertips than the greatest libraries in history, has devolved into online troll wars and swamps of fake news and misinformation. It’s also why writers like me have to hold down day jobs even if we manage to create really good content that stands above the fray.
The worth of the written word is almost down to nothing because no one stops to think about whether it might be worth something before they add it to a Social Media website’s intellectual domain for absolutely nothing. Worse, someone who takes the effort to make a website, polish their writing into an actual intellectual product, and invites others to explore something thoughtful and substantive is just a self-promoting spammer.
Frankly, I can’t help but think society might be a better place if the ire was directed at the swamp-dwelling trolls, the meme brigades, and the purveyors of fake news instead of the honest entrepreneurs who have no idea they’re about to get shadow-banned on Reddit for daring to try and own the value of their own content.
This article is originally from a segment of From the Hawk’s Nest, Justin Stapley’s bi-weekly newsletter.
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One Sick Day Proves We Need More Voices in Truthful Media
On October 19, I was sick. It crossed my mind that I had finally gotten the ‘rona, but my wife’s cream of chicken soup and a few extra hours of sleep into mid-afternoon had be back up and running after a sleepless night before.
When I finally stumbled over to my computer in the evening, I was met with a deluge of concern from readers. They asked what had happened as only one article had been posted that day. Generally, we post between 10-20 daily between all of the sites, not included curated and aggregated content. Seeing that we’d only posted my super-early morning article before taking the rest of the day off had readers assuming the worst.
We have a wonderful and talented group of writers who volunteer their time for the sites and their readers. Sharing their amazing perspectives has always been a blessing to us because we cannot afford to hire anyone at this time. But having great writers is meaningless if we don’t have great editors, or at least one additional. My wife helps me read and edit stories from time to time, but I’m a one-man show when it comes to getting the stories posted.
Whenever I highlight our desperate need for donations, I note that we do not receive money from Google ads even though most in conservative media are beholden. I often ambiguously note that the money donated will help us grow. Today, I’m highlighting a specific need. We must get an editor to help take some of the load and to expand on our mission of spreading the truth to the world. One sick day proved that.
The great news is that there is no shortage of people who CAN help. I am emailed variations of resumes every week by people who are much smarter than I am. As much as I’d love to hire some of them, we simply cannot. That takes money and as blessed as we’ve been to receive donations and collect ad money (though not from Google or Facebook), we have still fallen short.
Those who have the means, PLEASE consider donating. We have the standard Giving Fuel option and people can donate through PayPal. We are also diving into what we believe is extremely disruptive technology at LetsGo.finance, the world’s first major donation portal for crypto. I’ll be talking a lot more about them in the near future. Those who prefer Bitcoin can send to my address here: 3A1ELVhGgrwrypwTJhPwnaTVGmuqyQrMB8
We can get the voices out there and we’re willing to shine a spotlight on new talent. We just need the resources to make it happen. If you can help, we would be extremely grateful.
Thank you and God bless!
JD Rucker
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