Facebook VeniVidiScripto has been around for only a few years and certainly does have a terrific following, thanks to thoughtful people who enjoy reading a variety of stories, like to hear challenges and even respect the right to have different opinions.
The New York Post is a sensational newspaper with headline writers who are unequaled in their talent for drawing everybody into a story in three to six words. Their readership is in the hundreds of thousands.
Bob Grant is a digital creator, a business analyst, a Fair Haven native now living in Somerset County and a really smart guy. Like the rest of us, he’s hopping mad and is making it known in some pretty strong language.
The Monmouth Journal used to be a terrific newspaper Monmouth County residents could hold in their hands and read about everything from the latest arrests and city government fights to where the best Italian or French or Greek restaurants are. Now it’s a great newspaper on line, with daily stories and photos for pretty much all of Monmouth County, all done professionally by a small but very talented staff.
All of us have been severely impacted by social media taking over news, making it cheap and easy to get stories without plunking down a quarter or a dollar or more for a newspaper by staying glued to the computer. Hence, the death of local print media and the loss of newspapers as large as the Star Ledger.
Far and away, Facebook has been the biggest of the social media, the one that doesn’t cost anything to get on, that lets anybody write anything, but what controls what people say and how they say it. They do that by shutting you out when they think you’ve got too many followers or have too much to say or are covering subjects they don’t want.
Now they’re being more than downright nasty in their control of social media. Now they want to be the ones who control the news, and control how much of any one blog or newspaper you, the reader, can read.
Facebook is now limiting writers, professional and nonprofessional alike, to a certain number of stories a day, a week or a month. They make the decision that one blog is read too much or too often. So they shut down their access to the platform for as long as they want.
They want to be sure they get their way, and so they are now resorting to the almighty dollar….make that thousands of dollars…to ensure that they, Facebook, can control how much of what you, the reader, want to read.
Facebook is now going to introduce a new service, called Meta Verified. And writers who post more than they think they should post are going to have to pay a bundle of money….or not have their copy appear on Facebook.
There is a way to beat Facebook, there is a way to protect your rights….I can’t believe in the United States you still have to protect a person, or a magazine, a blog, or a newspaper’s right to be seen where everybody else can be seen albeit on a limited basis. But that’s what Facebook has come to.
Those readers who wonder why they are not seeing stories they would expect to see on Facebook can choose an alternative.
Thank goodness in America there are still ways to beat those who would like to suppress the news. Seek out alternatives
VeniVidiScripto is not a money-making blog. It’s the result of a journalist’s love for writing,’ it’s a means to keep people informed on a variety of subjects whether it’s a recipe or an award-winning child’s essay or a back-room disagreement among government officials.
It’s a way this journalist shows her love for America and her church, her hometown and all the wonderful people she knows and respects.
It’s a way this journalist can show her/e children and grandchildren that yes, the country was worth putting their lives on the line for in the military branches of service they served .
But because it is a non-profit blog written by a very verbose journalist, VeniVidiScripto will not be able to afford the more than a thousand dollars Facebook plans on charging in order to enable VeniVidiScripto to appear on its free-to-others social media.
There are ways to combat this. They’re called getting onto other social media sites. So
Read VeniVidiScripto on X (Formerly Twitter) at https://x.com/venividiscripto, or
Truth Social at https://truthsocial.com/@venividiscripto or
Next Door at https://nextdoor.com/profile/01rbwPtRcjKkTwwWF or
Blue Sky at https://bsky.app/profile/venividiscripto.bsky.social,
To make it even easier, sign up on VeniVidiScripto as a subscriber; it doesn’t cost a cent and ensures that every time there’s a new story you might like to peruse, you’ll get an e-mail letting you know about it and where you can find it .
Thomas Jefferson would be aghast!
