As we’ve seen with Facebook reducing reach without us paying for ads, the new owner at X/Twitter and last week with corporate moves at Reddit, relying on a third party platform can be dangerous for small business owners. More than ever it’s vital for a small business to own their platform and marketing channel(s).
Facebook holding business audiences hostage
Facebook holds business page audiences hostage by implementing algorithms and policies that restrict the organic reach of their posts. This means that even if a business has a large number of followers, only a small fraction of them will see their content in their newsfeeds. As a result, businesses are forced to pay for advertising or boost their posts to reach a wider audience. This creates a dependency on Facebook’s paid advertising platform, making it challenging for businesses to effectively engage with their audience without spending money. Essentially, Facebook’s algorithmic control limits the organic visibility of business page content, requiring businesses to invest in paid advertising to reach “their” desired audience.
On top of this, Facebook can just decide to delete “your” group or page with no warning. There’s nobody to reason with if this happens, and all that time and energy you might have put into building that presence is gone. Remember that our data is the product on Facebook and it’s not a solid base for your small business.
So hosting your business exclusively on Instagram had some major downsides. Not only was your revenue completely at the mercy of how Instagram chose to share your content with your followers, but you were also at risk of losing it entirely if the app disabled or suspended your account.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/influencers-quitting-instagram
Twitter (now called ‘X’) stoking outrage for profit
Twitter encourages arguments for advertiser profit by creating an environment where controversial and divisive content tends to generate more engagement and attention. This engagement-driven model benefits advertisers as it increases user activity, which in turn boosts ad revenue. Twitter’s algorithms prioritise content that sparks debate and elicits strong emotional responses, often leading to heated arguments and polarised discussions. Advertisers can take advantage of this by strategically placing ads alongside controversial content, knowing that it will attract more attention and potentially increase their profits.
AS with Facebook, your profile can be disabled without warning, and with little recourse. If you break their constantly changing, cryptic terms of use you can get ‘shadow banned’ or de-prioritised so nobody sees your posts, or outright banned. All this makes it a waste of time and energy to spend any serious time on Twitter/X these days.
Apollo was a Reddit app built for speed, customisation, and providing the best the platform had to offer.
Reddit closing 3rd party app access
Reddit decided to close access for third-party apps with short notice in mid-2023, limiting the ability of users to access the platform through alternative applications. This move aims to consolidate control over the user experience and ensure consistency across all platforms. What this means in practice is that we need to use their terrible website or app which are bot full of adverts and have terrible user interface. Third party apps allow blocking of things we didn’t want to see – including ads.
However, it has caused frustration among users who prefer the functionality and features offered by third-party apps. By closing access, Reddit aims to maintain control and provide a unified experience, but it has resulted in a loss of choice and flexibility for users who enjoyed using alternative apps. This has shown how little Reddit care about their users and how we are just numbers on a spreadsheet to sell to advertisers.
Digital Sharecropping
This idea has been around for nearly 20 years now and is more relevant than ever:
by putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work, provides an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value of the free labor provided by the very many and concentrate it into the hands of the very few.
https://www.roughtype.com/?p=634
Summary
Relying on large social media platforms for our small business is risky in this time of hyper-capitalism and advertiser focused business strategy. A website and email list that you control, that can’t be taken away from you on a whim is a way more stable way to start and grow your business. A simple website doesn’t have to cost the earth so drop us a line if you need some help your small business web design.