I have had complaints from regular readers that they are unable to put my blog posts on Facebook.
A reader wrote this earlier today:
“When I try to share your blog from Word Press on Facebook only your name shows up many times. Just tried it with your messages about Arizona and James Wilson. Does Zuckerberg not like you? I don’t know if others have this problem but I think you are being censored.”
I had no answer since I do not frequent Facebook.
I forwarded his question to a few friends.
Anthony Cody responded:
“I tested on both my personal wall, and on the wall of a group of which I am administrator. In both cases, when I posted a link to a post from Diane’s blog, no preview of the post would come up.
“My own blog, at http://www.livingindialogue.com, is also a WordPress blog, and I tested it in the same way. In both cases, a preview of the blogpost appeared.
“I would not be surprised if Facebook is doing something in the name of “fighting fake news,” and perhaps put certain sites on some sort of blacklist where their posts are limited in this way. But I am not sure how to find out if this is the case! Perhaps you should ask your readers?
“anthony”
Have any of you encountered similar problems? Is this blog blacklisted on Facebook? I recall that Campbell Brown was hired by Zuckerberg to monitor Facebook for “fake news.” Is this her handiwork or am I being paranoid?
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do you have a FB page we could share from? My posts get censored a lot.
Kati Gilson ________________________________
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I may have a FB page but I never look at it. I figure anyone who wants to reach me knows where I am.
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Diane…the same thing happens when I try to post articles on the RESIST Meetup site. It does not accept anything that is scanned…very annoying…but their software is set up that way and there is no way around it…and I guess Facebook is the same.
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I think what they’re saying is that for sharing purposes, it may work more smoothly for some if we have the ability to share a post that’s already been posted to your FB page instead of sharing a link from WordPress. I think you’ll get a lot more shares, and you’ll have more control over how the original message is presented. That’s how I prefer to do it for my blog posts, anyway.
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Interesting. I’ve had similar problem of late posting my stuff
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I just posted your blog to my Facebook page with no problem.
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Posted no problem for me.
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No problem for me. I copied this link and posted it on FB using my iPhone
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The link to the specific post came posted . But not the post itself till I clicked on the link.
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I post entries from your blog on Facebook for the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education. Just recently the post has changed. Instead of the title of the post, just your name appears like this: dianeravitch.net.
The links, however go to the correct blog post pages. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy…I have seen the same problem with a couple of other sites. It’s rare, at least in my experience, but it doesn’t seem to me to be directed only at you.
My guess is that there is a glitch with Facebook or WordPress…
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I am finding this also; most often I go back and put in some kind of words that would tell people what the article is about ; or, I recopy the title because not too many of the friends I have would bother to open it the way it appears “dianeravitch.net” thinking it was not the newest article or whatever…. I try to always get a title and even two or 3 sentences to describe what appears if you open the link. Thanks Stu : I try to read your posts whenever they appear and pass them on.
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I have had to ask friends to check their settings, friends whose personal posts (as in their own writing) can no longer be shared as the share button has vanished. In some cases their settings seem to have been changed without their consent, and then changed again after they corrected them. At other times I have been hit with repeated security checks for hitting “share”. Based on what you have described and Anthony Cody’s experience, we here and activists in general are most definitely being censored by Facebook who IMHO does not at all like our opposition to the invasion of authentic education by the ersatz big data substitute.
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“At other times I have been hit with repeated security checks for hitting “share”. ” yes, this happens to me… and I notice today the message has changed it is more of a “warning”….. sometimes I write back to them in this message “why are doing this? because I voted against trump?” but no human ever sees my response
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Jean…you made me smile…love it. Happy almost 4th.
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Posts fine for me to FB and to Twitter. Thank you for all that you.
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I posted “SHOCKER! Massive Charter Scandal […]” to my FB page. The post preview only showed dianeravitch.net, and the actual post shows the same. When I click on it from my FB post, it does take me to the “SHOCKER!” post.
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I’ve posted many of your posts on Facebook previously, but couldn’t tonight! Seems something is up! Please fight it!!!
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I have noticed this recently. I think Anthony might be onto something, because it is a recent thing. I used to be able to post with a preview. I resorted to posting some of he links you share instead. Then. I copy and paste your words and credit you. However, I’d rather post your commentary as a blog post for my friends.
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I tweet yoyr blog posts , and the tweets are forwarded.
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You should ask FB about it. Maybe they can fix it! I also wonder if there is a wordpress setting that has changed.
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I have a problem communicating with large corporate entities. I don’t like to talk to machines. If I don’t get an answer, I go crazy and start shouting rude things like “human! I want to talk to a human!”
There is a website called Get Human that gives you phone numbers for big corps where a human will answer.
I won’t call FB p, however, because I don’t have a problem. Other people apparently do.
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I do that all the time, Shout, “I want to talk to a human.”
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Good thing you have a publicist because if you had to deal with Amazon for your books, you’d definitely go crazy! Spent four hours setting up an account that should have taken 1/2 hour max, and really 15 minutes. Terrible site pages, customer service with folks from the Philippines whom I could barely understand, and then they didn’t even speak Spanish either. I was warned about dealing with Amazon, but I couldn’t have imagined just how insanely Kafkaesque, Daliesque, acidtripesque Goyaesque nightmare of the sleep of reason it would be!
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I have suspected that Amazon hires internet bullies known as Trolls to work in its customer service department.
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Hah! Sorry, aekoonlaba, but that’s a laugh. Trying to talk to a human being on FB about a problem you’re experiencing is like climbing the local anthill and trying to jump to the moon.
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Facebook is where devoted members rack up virtual friends as if it is a competition and the winner has the most friends.
But, a real face-to-face friend of mine told me that he invited all 400 of his girlfriend’s Facebook friends to her birthday party last month and three showed up. He said he sent out countless reminders and few of the 400 even replied.
Is a Facebook friend in name only, a real friend? How do we make friends with hundreds of people we never meet?
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gitapik Not my experience with the FBI. There ARE local offices. A few years ago, while I was in Oklahoma, I called about an issue and the person who picked up was an agent. I don’t know enough to generalize, but just to offer an example.
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That’s good to know, Catherine, and hopefully that represents a change.
A few years ago, my daughter’s account was hacked and taken over by a very mean spirited guy who was filth personified.
We tried to contact FB to either give the access to the account back to my daughter or delete it entirely.
It was totally fruitless. We gave up after about a month or so. She opened up a new account and all of her friends “unfriended” the old one.
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gitapik Don’t know what the general movement is. Certainly I am hopeful.
However, this other thing–of the possibility of a well-developed forum like Diane’s blog being omitted from possible copy functions for purely political reasons is REALLY DISTURBING. If true, so much for the fairness doctrine suggested by some communications oligarchs, not to mention that other little document named The First Amendment.
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Got my vote and no argument, here, Catherine.
But Mark might not agree.
“My house. My rules. And I’ve got a VERY big house”
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gitapik Insofar as FB (not FBI) has such a scope for his “house,” he is flirting with government controls. Said in another way, if he cannot control himself in terms of fairness and service to his “house,” and if he has a lock on that service, then there is no other remedy for those in the house–he will need to BE controlled. (BTW, I don’t use face book.)
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Whoa, Nellie! Are you talking about the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), Catherine? LOL! Definitely a LOT easier to contact them than, Facebook.
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gitapik Oh, how funny! Yes–I misread it to read FBI. So sorry. Glad you caught it. I try to read all of the posts, and go too fast sometimes. I’ll do better! I promise!
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Hey Lloyd. How’s it going!
Most of my experiences with FB have been pretty good. I’ve been able to rekindle friendships with people I haven’t seen in decades. I never “friend” someone I don’t know, either, unless someone I know asks me to, privately.
But the events leading up to this Trump disaster and ever since his swearing in have really put a damper on the experience for me. Knowing that FB was used so effectively to sway public opinion and reading so much hatred from friends of the right and left has made me seriously consider giving it up.
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:o)
How’s it going? A day at a time.
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I got deleted from FB a few months ago and apparently it was widespread. It came about because of the fake news issue. I don’t have FB friends and don’t use FB to share photos or to converse so it was assumed that I was a “fake account”. I only use FB because of a few closed groups for sewing/crafting and I don’t ever post anything to my page. It was a pain to get back onto FB once I was deleted since it kept telling me that my information was duplicate….DUH!
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Lisa…the exact same thing happened to one of my RESIST members. She is an attorney and wrote about fake news and other Trump stuff, and they took down her account. She has not been able to get back on. Censorship????
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I can’t share on Facebook either. As a teacher in NJ I wanted to share your 2 recent posts about Chris Christie.,
Sent from my iPhone
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I’ve had this problem, but not consistently. Very annoying.
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Often when I share one of your posts on Facebook, Google+, and Linkedned, I add a comment.
This was the comment I added to one of your posts that I shared on June 21st, and it was there: “Dark money comes from the dark side of the soul and is a malignant stage-four cancer for a democracy.”
Right below my comment was a box starting with “Maurice Cunningham: Dark Money Combines to Privatize Public Schools: PLEASE READ THIS!”
There was more after that but not much. Below that was DIANERAVITCH.NET
I clicked on that box and was taken straight to your site and that post.
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I don’t think it’s content-related. I have noticed FB having intermittent problems fetching previews from several sites. There have been web-wide changes in addressing recently that may be causing this.
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I agree that it’s not specific to you. But you might consider cross-posting to Facebook.
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I have had the same problem trying to share your blog posts on Facebook.
Sent from my iPhone
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I have attempted to post links to your blogs before and have never been able to do that. I thought it was WordPress. I have also been unable to post Mercedes Schneider’s blogs.
Elaine Huff
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Zuckerberg is involved in the online education business. It is possible that your posts are purposely blocked. I have no problem when I put your posts on Twitter.
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This AM, a pundit said on TV that Zuckerberg is running for Prez…can that be true?
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i can copy/paste the URL, but when i tried to just “share” to FB, it only has your name, not the blog post 😦 what is up, i wonder with you….
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I do have a Facebook page, but must admit I know very little about how it works. Perhaps all of us that read your blog, should flood Facebook with that question.
I’ll try to ask some of the more knowledgeable friends about this.
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Only dianeravitch.net shows when I post to Facebook. No title. No preview.
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Two things I have heard:
“The Internet is always a little bit broken” and “even paranoids have enemies”
Bit.ly worked fine!
http://bit.ly/2rPFbKm
Hmmmmmmh . . . nothing would surprise me, really
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I ran your website through https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/.
I initially got a “web server not found” as a problem. When I tried to post it on Facebook, I only got your name dot com as the preview. Then I selected “scrape again” and it properly previewed your site.
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Glad to see I wasn’t the only one to think of the debug tool. I’ve had to use that many times before to get my own blog posts to upload correctly on my blog’s Facebook page. I don’t really understand why it has to be that way, but for some reason that’s the only thing that works.
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It seems to be fixed now! I get the preview box and the title of this post as well as the preview and the link….. I think someone listened.
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I was able to capture this article here and post it to my FB page…. then I could open it and read it….. , delete it etc.
On two other articles about health care (one from Rolling Stone and one from Vox) I got this message… “It looks like you’re using this feature in a way it wasn’t meant to be used. Please slow down, or you could be blocked from using it.” so the FB filter is set to determine what I am “sharing.”
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Fakebook is using a fake person (Campbell Brown) with all sorts of fake news on her own site to monitor for fake news?
Ha ha ha ha
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There have been recent complaints of “ghost blocking” on some of the sites I rely on for political information. When I tried to share your post, it gave me a link to your blog but not a preview. For the increased censorship reasons, many are suggesting going to another social platform, but other than twitter I have not yet found one that would work as well.
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I could post it just fine. However, the title of your page and the text in the post shows up but the space for a photo or image is blank. That might be from how your blog is set up but I’m not certain. Someone with a social media marketing background would be able to help you. If you can’t find someone to help you, let me know and I will connect you with someone who may be able to help.
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I placed the link on my wall and it was a live link. I don’t know if someone else can open it though. ~Evelyn Sideri
Sent from my iPhone
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If Zuckerberg is censoring the internet by blocking you. What should we do?
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It could be your WordPress theme. The way your preview comes up can be dictated by the settings in the program, such as if you are required to have a featured photo.
You could also try this debug tactic.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/facebook-image-thumbnail/
I haven’t had any problems sharing your posts. So it’s difficult to troubleshoot something I can’t see myself. But my first inclination is to check the theme. And to use one with “featured photos.”
I can do some more checking later this morning.
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I just posted this article on my FB page and no problem at all.
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Diane,
No. You are not being paranoid just real.
Helen Olchak Otero
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Dianna,
Nate the website maker here.
I’m not sure why you’re having this issue (WP-Fb integration should be bullet proof) but can you go enable the Publicize settings in Jetpack?
That might fix the issue.
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testing
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Diane In my view, there’s enough “going around” to at least raise questions–not paranoid, just rightly suspicious. If you thought it were so, regardless of having no substantiation, THEN it would be paranoid, sort of like Trump’s Base.
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I am having the same problem Diane.
Arnie
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Happened to me for first time yesterday. I have posted your columns a lot and this was first time this happened. A problem.
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One thing I think I’ve noticed is when I share your blog posts to FB they seem to go to the general blog home page and not to the article in specific. When the blog is updated the original blog post I shared is often no longer visible (and a reader whose not familiar would not know to scroll down looking for it). Not sure if this is always the case but each article should have its own individual link, not just to the blog home page.
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Cathy,
That seems to be the problem.
Every post has an individual link but only diane ravitch.net pops up
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I’ve been copying and pasting to FB, both your original posts and the articles linked to them, for years, Diane. No problem. That fine photo of you and the subject of the post are always shown.
After reading this post, I did a test, using your post about Wilson’s questioning the wisdom of A-G grading for ALL students (excellent article, btw) :
1) I used the “Share” function on your post and sent it to my FB account. As you said, the only thing that shows up is the address to your basic blog. No photo. No preview. But when I click on it, I go straight to the article in question.
2) I did a Copy/Paste of the address of the post as a means of posting to my FB account. Same result as in step 1.
3) I went to the link (Mr. Wilson’s “Coherent Education” blog post) and shared it to my FB account via a Copy/Paste. Same result as with steps 1 and 2.
4) I went to the National Geographic site and did a Copy/Paste to my FB account of this cool encounter between a young hippo and a crocodile. Everything worked out just fine. Title, preview, etc. No problem.
It’s simple enough to use a few keywords as a flag that then effects the shared information in whatever way the programmer wishes to have it shared. They could put up a smiling yellow “Have a Nice Day” face if they wanted to. Whether this is intentional or not is the question…
Sorry this is happening.
Here’s the clip of the hippo and croc, btw:
//assets.ngeo.com/modules-video/latest/assets/ngsEmbeddedVideo.html?guid=0000015c-d156-d1cb-a7fd-d5dfe96c0000
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Whoops…wrong one:
//assets.ngeo.com/modules-video/latest/assets/ngsEmbeddedVideo.html?guid=0000015c-d156-d1cb-a7fd-d5dfe96c0000
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Arghhh!!!
video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/170622-hippo-follows-croc-vin-spd
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Oh well…the elephants are a treat, too. Maybe Zuckerberg’s got his hands on National Geographic, too.
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No, but Rupert Murdock got his claws into National Geographic. The content on Nat Geo is the worse for it.
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Bummed my mellow with that little post, Threatened. Ugh.
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Did you see the next NG video where elephants chased the Hippos away from the crock and it was left alone after that?
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Yep. That poor li’l croc. Hippos are very big. Elephants are bigger.
I saw this show about the increase of rogue male elephants a while back. Direct effect of poachers killing off the adult males in the herds. This one elephant was uprooting trees and throwing them at a nearby rhino who was just minding his business.
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Sorry. It’s been a huge bummer for me, too. National Geographic doesn’t even send out maps anymore.
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I don’t hit the “share” button. I copy and paste the URL into my comments on my “Education Post of the Day,” which has a photo of my final classroom so friends who are not into education issues can scroll by. I also state a topic. I post all links in comments. Here’s what your post looked like this past week:
Nancy Flanagan: The War on the Teaching Profession Is No Longer Covert
In 2010, the corporate reform movement emerged as a…
DIANERAVITCH.NET
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It’s not a conspiracy! I’m an IT director for a few organizations and handle social media sharing for large organizations daily. You must not have the proper sharing settings in your WordPress plug-ins. You have to make sure you have the snippet editor set to display a text preview of the shared post. Also, you must set a “featured image” for every post, if you want an image to appear when the post is shared on Facebook.
If you have an IT person handling your WordPress settings, ask that person to check JetPack and Sharing plug-in settings for you. Make sure that you set them up to display previews when people share your posts. Especially, make sure the “snippet preview” and the “Meta description” fields are filled out properly before publishing the blog posts.
I recommend installing and using the “Yoast SEO” WordPress plug-in on your blog site. It will serve you well to solve these issues.
Thanks for all of your work and service for public education!
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Thank you, I have smarter people than me checking the settings.
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Thanks ochie. Any idea why it would’ve changed? It used to include photo and preview. Maybe an update is available and necessary?
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Thanks for this info, Ochie…would this apply also to the Meetup settings? When I scan and try to paste to their email function, the message pops up that it does not accept Microsoft. I have often tried to send Diane’s info the the Meetup RESIST group…does not work.
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I just returned from the invitation-only Facebook Communities Summit in Chicago (Wed June 21 – Fri June 23), where Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the new mission and rollout of lots of new Facebook groups tools and features to help administators run their groups more effectively. As the invited representative of BATs, I also provided input on changes and features that would help me run BATs more effectively. There seemed to be a lot of “disruption in the force” last week as Facebook implemented all these new features. I have never had any problem sharing Diane’s blog posts. If Mark Zuckerberg had serious any issues with education reform, the co-founder of BATs would have never, ever been invited!
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Diane, I often post your blog on BATs network and my own FB page. I don’t seem to have a problem. I will let you know if I do.
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Thank you.
Trying to find out why it is a problem for some, not for others.
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I am always sharing your posts on my FB. Whether I click on the FB share icon or I copy and paste directly on my FB. I’ve never had a problem. Thank goodness because a lot of my colleagues enjoy seeing what I post about education. They aren’t interested in going to a blog so they count on me. I guess that’s a good hing? 🤔
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Be careful. I am also from Utah and I have had several times where I have gotten in trouble for posting education-related posts. I was forced to remove all of my FB posts on opting out of the tests. The state board of education has threatened our licenses if we so much as mention that opt out is an option. See this article. To my knowledge, this policy has not changed, and I had colleagues rat me out to administration.
http://www.standard.net/Education/2014/04/24/25-SAGE-warning.html
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Have you considered publishing anonymous guest posts on other blogs that are not yours?
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We’ve been told by administration to be very careful what we post on FB, as teachers.
I’m respectful in my treatment of the matters at hand. I always tell my friends that this is information that they wouldn’t normally see in the mainstream media. I make it a point to remain neutral so that people can draw their own conclusions. Try to stick to the facts and let them connect the dots. So far I haven’t had any problems. Nobody knocking down my door.
I’ve been told that admin is legally within their rights to tell us not to publicly campaign against the tests. We’re employees within the system and are expected to do as we’re told. I’m no lawyer, but this is what I’ve heard from some colleagues who I respect.
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I haven’t considered that actually, Lloyd. I don’t know anyone who has an education blog. Diane has posted a couple of things here that I told her about, but that’s about it.
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:o)
Here’s a link to the Education Bloggers Network. I credit Anthony Cody and Diane Ravitch and a few for with its birth.
About
EduBloggers: Dedicated to truth-telling for democracy.
The Education Bloggers Network is an informal confederation of more than 200 education reporters, advocacy journalists, investigative bloggers, and commentators. Members of the Education Bloggers Network are dedicated to providing parents, teachers, public education advocates and the public with the truth about public education in the United States and the efforts of the corporate education reform industry
https://edubloggers.org/about/
My Crazy Normal blog is one of them. It’s on the membership list under Lofthouse. Scroll down if you want to see
https://edubloggers.org/membership-2/
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When I pasted the Web address directly into Facebook, it showed the preview. When I shared directly from Diane’s page to Facebook, no preview. I don’t think it’s just Diane’s page. I think it’s some fussy Facebook code.
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It is a facebook issue. The way to fix it, and it has to be done one case at a time, is to go to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/ and put the URL for the blog post into the first field and click the buttons ‘debug’ and then ‘scrape again.’ This tells Facebook to pull the title from the post again and store it. I did this for a few recent posts and it fixed them. Unfortunately this will keep happening until facebook makes it so that if someone posts something it automatically does this.
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Thanks for the info, Gary, but I don’t understand why it’s changed.
Up until now, I was able to share plenty of Diane’s and other’s blog posts associated with education without any problem. Picture and preview would automatically show up. Why would this suddenly change whereas the National Geographic link I shared came out perfectly this morning?
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Zuckerberg censors. I quit FB. Will NOT support another billionaire fascist.
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You do have a point there
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