Opportunities Like Never Before

if we only had the reach

The post is too long for an email; you will need to click on the title to open the website if you would like to read the whole thing.

Social Media provides opportunities like never before.

For example, three days ago I posted this onto notes.¹

Here is the post and the post is linked below:

There is shadow ban on Substack, and I find myself perplexed by its mechanics. While I am uncertain about the underlying programming, I can certainly observe its effects. My awareness of this phenomenon is underscored by the paradox of my subscriber and follower count continuing to ascend while engagement does not. Consequently, recognizing this occurrence, I'm going to do the same thing I would do on X. I will just restack my notes so that my followers and subscribers still do not see them.

Of course, when they followed or subscribed, it was for no other reason than that they wanted to be seen following me or subscribed to me. They are vain people who want to look good by following and subscribing. It was not for any other reason, like wanting to see my posts. What I notice is that there's a lot of attention for my restacks of other publishers and creators here on Substack. This mirrors the dynamics on X, where most engagement I received stemmed from my reposts or retweets. It appears that a similar trend is unfolding on Substack.

If you don’t know why I posted this meme, you may be unawares of what is really going on on Social media.

In the replies, I was assured that I am not shadow banned because I have been showing up in J.P.’s feed. Here is his response:

Not a follower or subsciber; see your notes in my feed regularly (and this increases the more we interact here).

And this is the reply that I left for J.P:

Hot tip: subscribe or follow if you want the notes to stop showing up.

Dr Mike Yeadon

liked the original post and also my reply where I suggested that you might need to subscribe or follow me to find out if I am indeed shadow banned. Here was his reply to me:

My subscriber count on Telegram has not moved in at least a year, if not reduced.

I have few measures of engagement and I don’t know how reliable they are, but they’re all heading downwards.

It’s interesting to note that he likely has far more followers than I do, and when I view his Substack publication, he has over 20,900 subscribers. My Substack publication is sitting at under 900 subscribers. But as you can see, his reply to my post only got 2 likes. So, I do think he is having a very similar experience to me and many others!

He replied to me in another instance on that day, noting the siphoning off that happens on social media and to a lot of publications on Substack:

Renee, I know the feeling. We are each caught in small cells of generally like-minded, good people. But outside of the cell, it seems to me that a distressingly high proportion of people are, or act as if they’re, wholly unaware of the severity of the threat to their freedom and even life.

Again note that his post only received 3 likes, suggesting to me that while many people follow him and subscribe to him. Very few of those people are granted the pleasure of seeing his replies or posts.

Not long ago, I left a reply on one of his posts about Ivermectin. I wasn’t sure if he ever replied because I did not receive any notification. When I looked again, I saw that he had indeed replied. I wonder why the system did not give me a notification when he replied. I will speculate on that further on in the article.

My comment was this:

I would like to find the article that you mentioned where the price is up 890%. Of course finding stuff like that is nearly impossible. If you could help I would appreciate that.

This was the reply he left me:

If to me and if in relation to ivermectin, it was worldwide SALES that went up nearly 9-fold.

Since I did not receive a notification that he had replied, I had to return to this article and sift through 300 to 400 comments to even come across this interaction. My take on that is that we are allowed to communicate but it is discouraged. Maybe it depends on who you are. But this is my experience and I imagine it is his experience and many others too.

Here is that article in case you wanted to read it.

No publicity is bad publicity

So back to that comment I had made to J.P. …

Follow or Subscribe if you do not want to see my posts…It sounds like a joke, but I am being serious. There are two aspects I want to raise.

First, novelty. Social media employs this strategy to keep you hooked. There is always something new; there is always someone new and interesting. You found me, and that was exciting for you, but after you follow me, social media wants to direct you elsewhere to satisfy your desires for novelty.

Secondly, you found me, and perhaps that poses a challenge for special interest groups like Big Pharma. I don’t have much positive to say about pharmaceutical products. I don’t sing their praises. I won't write about Ivermectin or mRNA treatments—though I will be discussing Ivermectin at some point, it will be from a critical perspective, not a commendatory one.

Before I close off this article, I want to share some other accounts that I expect will represent a problem for special interest groups. If you find either one of these, I expect that social media or the Substack algorithm will recommend other new and exciting accounts to you immediately after you follow or subscribe.

biologyphenom

and

Freedom Podcast

are both covering the Scottish Inquiry in depth. Perhaps this is why I see very similar things happening with their publications. As an example, I am subscribed to Freedom Podcast, which just published this piece:

UK COVID Inquiry| Misleading the Public

I have recently changed my settings back to receiving email notifications. I noticed that I received an email for this post. But when I checked the main dashboard on Substack it was not recommended to me even though I am subscribed to this publication.

This is why I recommend that you do not disable email notifications. Additionally, it is the reason I had to scale down the number of Substack publications I was subscribed to.

I would like to write about this more one day, but this article is getting really long. If I get a chance, I would like to write about things we could all do to make this work better for us. I am seeing it very clearly now how social media is being used against us. We could find it benefiting us one day, but currently, there is a lot of interference going on. As I said earlier, we are allowed to communicate with each other, but certain people will find that there are barriers in place discouraging them from actually communicating. This is a serious problem; I do wish people would take it more seriously. Solving this could make a huge difference for everyone, in my opinion.

Thanks for reading!

1. For my readers who do not know, notes it the equivalent of Facebook or Twitter but it is available on Substack, the symbol for notes, that you would see if using either the app or the website to view Substack, is below.