Hi Everyone,

This post contains my first 3Speak video. 3Speak has been around a few months now. I applied a couple of months ago to post videos on this platform. Sadly, I did not hear anything back from the team. I was under the impression that this new video platform was for censored content. So far, from what I have seen, most of the content is related to cryptocurrency and a few political posts.

My content has been partially blocked/censored on a few other social media sites. YouTube demonetised some of my videos prior to rule changes. After the rule changes, all my videos are demonetised. I haven’t posted many videos over the past year because of this and the problems I’ve had with DTube. I summarise my problems with DTube in my post ‘BYE BYE DTUBE’. To DTube’s credit, they have made some good changes. I am considering using their platform again. Before I do that, I would like to give 3Speak a chance.

Other websites that I have had problems with are Instagram and Facebook. I do not post many pictures to Instagram but the response can be mixed. I’ve had a few pictures receive quite a few likes and some pictures are almost invisible. My sister sometimes has to visit my page to like pictures because they do not appear in her feed. I assume that my pictures often do not appear my follower’s feeds or maybe not even in the tags I use. Sometimes it seems likely that I am ‘shadow banned’ or ‘ghost banned’. This is quite difficult to prove as everything seems normally to the user but other people are restricted from viewing the content.

In regards to Facebook. I have received temporary restrictions on particular actions, possibly shadow banning, and a 3-month ban at the beginning of 2018. The temporary restrictions normally come in after I have shared content a little too many times for their liking. I think they are implying that I am spamming even though I do not share the same content more than once to each group, I add text explaining the link and I engage with my audience when I am not shadow banned. The shadow banning is most apparent when I share anything related to Steem. I doubt the lack of engagement for those posts is purely coincidence.

The 3-month ban on Facebook in early 2018 was really strange. The ban came out of nowhere. I was not using Facebook that much at the time. For no apparent reason, I could no longer access my account. I received a generic message stating I had violated Facebook policy. I attempted to make contact for about a month and received nothing more than the same generic message. This was annoying as my Spectrum Economics Facebook webpage was doing pretty well at the time but I could no longer access it. Another 2 months passed, and then suddenly I was receiving Facebook notifications again in my email. I logged into Facebook and regained full access. Sharing content was a lot easier; I did not need to answer the ‘identity the letters and numbers’ security question anymore. I also could share almost limitlessly without temporary restrictions.
My Spectrum Economics page continued suffer. I was getting almost zero engagement on my posts for about a year. I guess they didn’t need to restrict my actions if I was shadow banned. In 2019, my Spectrum Economics Facebook page is getting far more engagement again. I even managed to get over 1,000 likes after the page had been sitting on 900+ likes for over 18 months. With all the problems I have faced in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised if I faced further restriction again at some point.

Why would my content be restricted?

If you are familiar with my work, you might not be a little surprised I am having these problems. Most of my content is not particularly controversial. I write and make videos about economic theory and application. I rarely write about or make videos about cryptocurrency. The only cryptocurrency I ever talk about is Steem. These posts are mostly intended for the Steem internal audience. So why would I face restrictions and censorship?

The first time I encountered a restriction was on YouTube. A made a video about veganism and it was demonetised. Apparently showing images of ‘food’ before it becomes ‘food’ is offensive to advertisers. Several of my videos were temporarily demonetised for a few after days before being cleared by YouTube. I guess I lost their trust. A few months later, all my videos were permanently demonetised when they added a requirement for number of subscribers. Now I have zero expectations of ever earning revenue from YouTube again.

My vegan content has offended other Facebook users. I remember sharing a post where I discuss animal abuse in the entertainment industry. I made a point about the abuse in Horse Racing. This sparked a lot of anger from other Facebook users. I got a lot of swearing in the form of acronyms. These people wouldn’t even use the full curse words. One person even threated to kill my dogs, I guess they must have looked at my user page and saw I have three dogs. Eventually, an admin person pulled the post from the group. I have received abusive comments in groups and then been blocked before I could even respond. In summary, I am not exactly the most popular person on Facebook. I think Facebook probably respond to the complaints people make about me and my content.

Most of the content I share relates to Steem. As Steem is a cryptocurrency, I believe Facebook automatically reduces the visibility of my content. If I post a picture describing something from my Steem post without sharing from Steem, my content will receive far more visibility. Regardless of Facebook’s dislike for anything cryptocurrency; I continue to share as much as I can. As mentioned earlier, the loss of visibility is not as bad as it used to be.

I mentioned that most of my posts are generally not controversial. However, I have what I call my ‘dark side of economics’ series. I have made several posts and videos where I describe how economics is used as a tool to exploit people. Many of these posts have a strong focus on how Governments, large companies and banks use economics to exploit people. I discuss topics such as:

manipulation of elections thought the two party system
manipulating economic activity through taxes and subsidies
the use of fear mongering to gain greater control
profiting from war both directly and indirectly
the use of scarcity as tool for profiting and control

You can access all of my ‘dark side of economics’ posts in Part 1 of my collection of works. This will give you a better idea of what I mean regarding this series.

New Chapter on 3Speak

I hope that this video and post gives you some idea regarding my experience with restrictions and partial censorship on social media. My experience on Steem has been quite the opposite. Most of the comments I receive have been constructive or at least positive. I am looking forward to what 3Speak has to offer. I am hoping that it can expand from the heavy focus on cryptocurrency. There is a lot of content out there that is buried because of unfavourable algorithms or because somebody might be offended.

Below is the YouTube version of this video. I like to have an alternative source just in case the 3Speak version is no longer available at some point.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and watch the video.

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.

New Economics Udemy Course

I have launched my first Udemy course ‘Economics is for Everyone’. The course focuses on how economics affects everyday people, the decisions they make and how they interact with the world around them. The course contains 24 video lectures (about 4 hours of viewing), 64 multiple-choice questions (3 at the end of most lectures), 32 downloadable resources (presentation slides, additional notes and links to relevant Steem posts), and 2 scenario questions. The course is currently free-of-charge. Click the link above to access the course.