There are way too many upheavals happening in the social media world. Unfortuanely, this affects most indie authors and creators. Here’s the tea:
First up is Twitter (I refuse to call it X). I’ve mostly abandoned my twitter account, and won’t be posting much, if at all, there now. I’m trying to get my posts and images downloaded before I remove all but one, which will state I’ve moved to Bluesky (without actually naming the app, of course. Apparently that puts spanners in works all over).
You can find me at: https://bsky.app/profile/karen-j.bsky.social
Tiktok
The second is the US Tiktok ban, the resulting court case, and the is-it-or-isn’t-it-going-to-happen fallout. I really don’t want to lose contact with my US readers, or creator friends if it all goes tits-up. Many have jumped ship to Instagram and youTube already.
Unfortunately, Meta has decided to play silly buggas (that’s as polite as I’ll get about it) and drop the inclusivity and fact checking from its TOS for both Facebook and Instagram. This means many of tiktokkers are finding alternatives to Meta apps.
I’ll be remaining on Tiktok (there are many amazing creators) and I, currently, get more engagement there.
This is a complicated one. I have many personal friends both local and overseas on FB. It’s currently the best platform for chatting and catching up. But, I’m really, really not happy with their recent changes. Unfortunately, there is nothing comparable to how FB works atm. I’ll be heavily blocking and hiding posts, and directing a lot of my posts elsewhere as time goes on.
For now, I’m still there, but will be doing all lives will be via youTube or Patreon for now.
See FB discussion above. It’s been recoommended I make ‘reels’ comments restricted to followers, to avoid most of the trolls. For now, most of those I follow (from Tiktok) are there. If they move elsewhere, or it proves inclusivity has gone down the gurgler, then I’ll likely be leaving as well.
YouTube
I’m staying and increasing my engagement there. Video seems to be the easiest medium for me atm. I’ve been copying a lot of my videos to my youTube channel, and adding most of my posts there as well.
Substack
This is all new to me at the moment. It could be a FB alternative? There’s facility for short and long posts, and chats. I can add images and videos (not sure how long as yet). I’ve finding many of accounts I follow there too. Overall, it seems like a great alternative to my website blog, which will come in handy if I have to overall my websites due to recurring hackers.
Where you can find me now
- www.karenjcarlisle – unfortunately I’ve been having some issues with hackers on occasion. I’m working to sort this out.
- Tiktok
- Bluesky (I’m posting there over Mastadon now. It’s much easier for me to find people)
- You can follow me, or support me on Patreon. I’m doing more of my public social media posts also on my Patreon page as well.
- Substack. – possible blog replacement as well.
- Instagram and Facebook (for now)
- Pinterest has links to research, crochet, steampunk, and book stuff.
- Discord – I have a general channel, news #karen-spills-the-tea, chats about Aunt Enid Mysteries #Ask-aunt-end, and #keeping-count if you want to follow my writing updates in relatively real time. This invite link lasts seven days, apparently. If you want to join me after that, please message me.
- You can review my books on Goodreads and Storygraph