When I first started blogging in 2012, the number of people reading the blog astounded me. Every day, between 15,000-25,000 people read what I wrote.
Most of the referrals to the blog were coming through Facebook.
Then, in 2016 or so, there was a precipitous and inexplicable drop. Something happened but I don’t know what. I know I offended some powerful people, but that was my job. I still have had more than 43 million page views since 2012, so I shouldn’t complain.
But something similar happened to Judd at Popular Information.
He writes:
“Here are the facts:
In 2021, 34,594 people subscribed to Popular Information after seeing our reporting on Google, Facebook, and Twitter (now X).
We are more than halfway through 2026, and just 932 people have subscribed to Popular Information from those same platforms.
“Our work is better than it was five years ago. (We were recently awarded the David Nyhan Prize for Public Policy Journalism by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.)
“But the billionaires who control Google, Facebook, and X have made the decision to choke off traffic to independent outlets like Popular Information. They are not interested in building an audience for stories like the one you are about to read.”
The algorithm changed. Someone knows, but I don’t. It changed for my blog, around the time that I began opposing Trump. Now the algorithm has changed for Judd.
Here is Judd’s latest post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I love & respect you so much for what you do for our country, Diane. This is where we are at with Social Media–the Oligarchs have all the power & can pull all the strings for their own benefit or for the politicians they own or support. We are all just pawns in their game of world control. Until we get some sane & reasonable people in government to put more controls on the handful of Oligarchs who control way too much of our media, it will only get worse.
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Thank you!!
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The relationship between discourse and representative government is established and vital. The existence of algorithmic manipulation of ideas threatens representative government like no other force in history.
Printing in Europe arguably produced the reformation. What paroxysm will result of the introduction of the electronic media? We are conducting an experiment on the public, or rather wealthy individuals are doing this without oversight.
Marsha Blackburn, trumps little girl who is running for governor of Tennessee, is increasing her tv ads that show how she champions the cause of keeping big tech out of our lives. It is a paradox that her party is under the thumb of billionaires who dominate the algorithms, and yet she demonizes the blank face of the very people who finance her.
Will the experience go awry.
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I generally receive NPE’s posts on Facebook, and I sometimes comment or send them to my friends, many of whom are fellow retired teachers. What happens to them after that, I have no idea.
On this site sometimes my posts go into moderation and appear later, which is fine. Sometimes they seem to just disappear into the cyber sphere. Yesterday, for example, I posted a comment on the Eli Broad ghost story that just seemed to evaporate, which has happened to me before as well.
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Many people have contacted me over the years to say that they no longer received my posts.
I told them to resubscribe but got no help from WordPress in finding out why.
One of those who were dropped was my brother. Another was my partner.
Some who resubscribed were dropped again. They gave up.
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Incidentally, I don’t believe Big Tech were/are in general big supporters of Trump – they tend to be solidly centrist (some individual exceptions may apply). Trump’s too bigoted and demogogue-ish. Big Tech wants everyone using their products, including Blacks, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, etc. Bigotry is bad for business.
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Diane, you are absolutely correct: The insidious algorithms that act behind the scene on all the social media controlled by the billionaire Trump toadies silently strangle the voice of anyone who opposes Trump, because opposing Trump is the same as opposing them — opposing their self-interest in making as much money as fast as possible with no constraints, just as Trump does. Trump is their enabler, and they are his agents in silencing opposition to him.
For example, on Facebook, those who consistently post or comment in opposition to Trump or his minions find that their “favorite” pages no longer appear or appear very infrequently in their feed, no matter how often those persons update their preferences.
I comments many times a day in opposition to Trump and his toadies, and lately I’ve find that while previously — and is the norm for other persons who post comments — the first few lines of my comments would be visible to attract readers to it; but now, no lines show when I post a comment, only my name, and when someone clicks on it all that they see is my profile…no comment text.
The MAGA Minion Moguls who control social media are strangling free speech.
I’ve come to the belief that what freedom needs is for the Kessler Syndrome to strike, wiping out the satellites upon which social media depends. Experts say that the density of satellites in orbit is already beyond the density at which the Kessler Syndrome can begin. Or perhaps another Carrington Event, a mammoth CME that fries the infrastructure. The social media moguls depend on constant cash flow, and the long disruption that would be caused by either (or both) of these events would destroy social media and impoverish the moguls.
Let us pray.
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Now I have to google the Kessler Sybndrome and the Carrington Effect.
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Okay, now that I looked up both Kessler and Carrington, I get it.
These obsessed media mavens will destroy us, esp with the help of the lame brain in the Golden Oval Office.
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Funny. Shortly after my comment above about the tech Oligarchs, this article popped up on my feed. He’s right on the mark:
https://jimhightower.substack.com/p/ai-billionaires-say-get-out-of-our?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
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A perfect analysis of the billionaires, who are detached from consequences.
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