Censorship

Picture this..

You’ve been thinking about sharing more about your life on your socials. It’s scary, but you’re facing your fear and doing it anyway. Your usual content gets pretty good engagement, so it’s likely that people will see this new content and interact with it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find some support that you didn’t know was out there, or maybe you’ll meet someone who has had a similar experience to you. So, you write out your caption and do your voiceover for your reel. You're nervous, but also excited to get this off your chest. You hit ‘Post’ and then…

Crickets. 

The Dreaded Algorithm

As much as we like to think that the internet is a free space, it’s not. We used to be able to put anything out there and people would find it and love it. That’s not actually the reality anymore. 

A lot of times on social media, I have to cultivate a certain ME and draw a line around what I’ll talk about. I try not to talk about racism, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism and all of the ISMs that drive us crazy. This is because I know the algorithms will hide my content. Anytime I’ve tried to bring awareness to these things, or even just talk about them, the algorithm will actively suppress it. 

I’ve had my content be interfered with to the point where I sent someone a link to my post and they told me it was broken and they couldn’t access it. I went to double-check and the post was still live on my account - they SHOULD be able to see it. 

As someone who’s been silenced and in hiding for their whole life, this is devastating. Everytime it happens to me, I spiral. The impact of this on our mental health is harmful. Folks raising awareness are blocked, cries for help or mutual aid are ignored. How can we look at anything objectively when everything is “curated”?

Of course, the social media giants say they don’t do this, but we all know that they do.

Keep them busy.

Keep them distracted.

Don’t let them rock the boat too much.

Self-Censorship

Another thing social media has done is make us constantly compare ourselves to others. We become focused on the engagement rates and “share-ability” of our content because we know how much the algorithm is at play. We become our own worst critic.

Is this good enough?

Will it resonate?

Is it worth talking about?

Will it even reach my audience?

I’ve taken videos down after posting them for multiple reasons. Maybe nobody saw it because the topic wasn’t full of sunshine and rainbows. Maybe I realized that I wasn’t ready to share the information. Maybe I needed to protect myself and others.

Sharing our lives and our art on social media doesn’t feel as organic as it once did. There’s so much pressure to fit someone else’s standard of what’s worth talking about. And that’s just not me. While I will continue to share my art on social media, having my blog allows me to express myself differently.

In this space, the only person censoring anything is me. I don’t have to bow down to the algorithm gods in order to say things that have meaning and impact without being hushed. So, thank you for being here, reading what I have to say, and maybe even joining in on the discussion.