Discussion
a small business is never going to be seen on an algorithm-driven platform, that was something that happened back in 2016, alas for us, we are living in 2026
not sure i would try to persuade them, let them try & fail & see how few views they're getting, & then talk to them about sharing their content where real people might actually engage with it...
@peachfront But isn’t it easier for a small business that depends on face-to-face networking to succeed on a platform that almost everyone already knows and uses?
Last weekend, I joined a guided tour, and afterwards almost everyone exchanged Instagram accounts.
The tour was excellent, and I could see how hard the owner is working to build a community of people interested in history. He also creates very interesting posts on Instagram, which clearly take a lot of time to prepare.
Doing that through a Fediverse account would be much harder at the moment, if possible at all, given both its smaller user base and the limited overlap with the business’s target audience.
no? a small business that depends on face-to-face networking is actually going to have to get face-to-face? social media is just twiddling thumbs, yes?
the days of getting views and help from the algorithm are gone...
look, i too have been on tours where Instagram accounts were exchanged, not only did I almost never see those photographer's images in my account after early 2025, i saw an AI ad using an image that -- to my certain knowledge, because i know him, was taken by another photographer -- Instagram was deliberately steering me away from the real thing to the fraud who buys Meta ads
Instagram is going to show you what they're paid to show you & what an AI has determined you're likely to be persuaded to buy
me, i just took the app off my f'n phone but i'm sure other people will lose money to carefully targeted ads but the current social media environment gives the deep pockets & the scammers a huge edge over the real
@peachfront That’s precisely my point: the face-to-face encounter and social media complemented each other. Everyone on the tour who used Instagram was commenting on the guide’s latest videos.
I don’t use Instagram myself, but in the social groups I attend, those who do use it seem to see and discuss one another’s content.
That doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the harm algorithmic platforms can cause. In fact, my biggest concern about Big Tech social media is explained in this letter: https://leavex.eu/letter
my point was for my group (photographers) this complementary effect you describe no longer exists -- i no longer see most of the people i follow, i see a minority interspersed with clickbait distractions "for you" i never signed up for
i could tell something was badly wrong that i was no longer seeing most of the photographers i wanted to see & that i was being overloaded with ads... but the "sponsored content" that used stolen images from someone i knew from real life (not just Instagram) was the last straw
if Meta ads are working for your business, by all means, continue, but they are making updates constantly & tons of people are having problems -- it's a pay to play world, can your small business afford it? if so, great, but that's no longer true for many
just exchanging Instagram accounts & telling yourself that people are seeing what you post is just not correct... that's not the world we live in anymore
@peachfront @peachfront I understand that this is no longer working for your photography network, and I’m not claiming that Instagram reliably shows everyone the content they follow.
I don’t use Instagram or Facebook, but many people in my social circles do. For them, it still seems to work as a way of connecting and seeing one another’s content.
Instagram content sometimes reaches even me, and then I need to find a workaround to view it. Just now, a contact shared a video about an immigrant from my home country who became homeless in Berlin and is raising funds to return home.
That’s the network effect I’m trying to describe, not an endorsement of Meta or its algorithms.
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