Facebook links for Glorantha and Runequest material

[Zac]

It might just be my specific browser configuration (I have a lot of security extensions) but in the past month or so I have noticed that I am totally unable to view any Facebook links without having the content obscured by a dialog asking me to log in or sign up.

The forums and the Well both have links to official media and info from Chaosium about Glorantha and Runequest material and I just wanted to let TPTB know that many, if not all, people without a Facebook account can no longer see that material.

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Zac said:

It might just be my specific browser configuration (I have a lot of security extensions) but in the past month or so I have noticed that I am totally unable to view any Facebook links without having the content obscured by a dialog asking me to log in or sign up.

The forums and the Well both have links to official media and info from Chaosium about Glorantha and Runequest material and I just wanted to let TPTB know that many, if not all, people without a Facebook account can no longer see that material.

A great many of Jeff's musings on FB are being copied onto the Well; not just links to the FB pages, but full-texts of Jeff's articles.

Chaosium has been clear, however, that the sheer numbers on FB (daily visitors to their FB pages vs. this forum) and the engagement on FB (written responses, likes), mean that it looks like the best return on their public-facing efforts.  Nick Brooke broke down an example recently-ish.

[Nick Brooke]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Nick Brooke broke down an example recently-ish.

I can give you an update on that controlled trial. My teaser post for Furthest: Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh got 190 👍❤️😮 reactions and more than 30 happy, positive, on-topic comments on the Facebook RuneQuest group; it got 20 reactions and spurred a digression about stock art portfolios and forum signatures here on BRP Central. (I didn’t bother posting to Reddit: that place is a graveyard, with moderation policies that are actively hostile to community content creators.)

[Malin]

Yeah, I have never been able to see facebook material. I rely on Well of Daliath, hopefully they get the most! (yes, I read it all when I found it because I was bored at work 🥰)

[Akhôrahil]

That's Facebook for you. Easiest fix might be to create an account using a throwaway e-mail address and then only use it for viewing - this shouldn't cause massive privacy concerns. 

[MOB]

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

 (I didn’t bother posting to Reddit: that place is a graveyard, with moderation policies that are actively hostile to community content creators.)

Heh, we (Chaosium) gave up on Reddit when the mods of the Call of Cthulhu subreddit chided the official Chaosium reddit account for engaging in "self promotion".

[Zac]

9 hours ago, g33k said:

Chaosium has been clear, however, that the sheer numbers on FB (daily visitors to their FB pages vs. this forum) and the engagement on FB (written responses, likes), mean that it looks like the best return on their public-facing efforts.  Nick Brooke broke down an example recently-ish.

One way to get the best of both worlds is a concept called POSSE. Publish On your Site Syndicate Everywhere. You create a post on the Well or the Chaosium blog and then post links to it on Facebook and other sites. Then Chaosium controls their own content but still gets to post on social media sites.

And then when you reference it on page like the list of upcoming Glorantha books you are linking to material that everyone can see. 

[Zac]

4 hours ago, MOB said:

Heh, we (Chaosium) gave up on Reddit when the mods of the Call of Cthulhu subreddit chided the official Chaosium reddit account for engaging in "self promotion".

IIRC Catalyst Game Labs got into a similar issue on Reddit. 

[Zac]

8 hours ago, Malin said:

Yeah, I have never been able to see facebook material. I rely on Well of Daliath, hopefully they get the most! (yes, I read it all when I found it because I was bored at work 🥰)

I was looking through the Well and this forum for some information on Talor and it should also be noted that nothing that is on Facebook is indexed. And even on Facebook their search engine is notoriously bad. 

Edit: yes, I really dislike Facebook. 🙂

Edited September 9 by Zac
Adding an edit

[SDLeary]

11 hours ago, Zac said:

I was looking through the Well and this forum for some information on Talor and it should also be noted that nothing that is on Facebook is indexed. And even on Facebook their search engine is notoriously bad. 

Edit: yes, I really dislike Facebook. 🙂

Yeah, Facebook, as an information source, really boils down to how well their algorithm works for you. Sometimes I get notified, sometimes not. 

SDLeary

[Zac]

12 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Yeah, Facebook, as an information source, really boils down to how well their algorithm works for you. Sometimes I get notified, sometimes not. 

This is another issue. One can talk about the "engagement" you get on a post but Facebook limits the number of people who like a Page who get to see the posts.

Unless you advertise the post. Or it generates engagement.

A game store I worked for would get 8-10% of the audience for the Facebook page seeing each post. We posted a link to a video about someone shooting arrows really quickly and the reach for the post jumped to 90%. 

[Nick Brooke]

So: 100% of the BRP Central audience sees my post, and it gets 20 reactions.

10% of the Facebook audience sees my post, and it gets 200 reactions.

What should I conclude from that?

[Rodney Dangerduck]

If you are a Facebook member of the Runequest Group, and you haven't noticed much lately due to their mysterious algorithm, you can always click on the group to see recent posts from that group.  Sometimes I have to do that.

As for privacy etc., yes, there are concerns.  😞

[Zac]

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

So: 100% of the BRP Central audience sees my post, and it gets 20 reactions.

10% of the Facebook audience sees my post, and it gets 200 reactions.

What should I conclude from that?

Well what is a "reaction" and what does that mean? What value does it supply? Does it actually have any value at all?

You're also creating an either/or situation which isn't really a solution. Siloing your content in one spot is not a good idea regardless of the size of the silo. 

[Nick Brooke]

Yes. But it would seem reasonable for Chaosium to devote most of its efforts to the platform(s) where our most engaged fans are active, even if some people have chosen not to use it (for doubtless excellent reasons of their own). Just as we send out marketing emails/videos and not postal circulars, even though we know some people don’t have email addresses or internet connectivity.

[Zac]

1 minute ago, Nick Brooke said:

Yes. But it would seem reasonable for Chaosium to devote most of its efforts to the platform(s) where our most engaged fans are active

Several issues: 

1) Your most engaged fans are not the people you need to engage with. A company wants to expand their audience. Engaged fans know who you are and know how to find out information about your company. Preaching to the choir is not useful work. 

2) Putting your content in a single spot that you don't control cedes control of that content to the social media site. As we can see with the Facebook posts, only Facebook members can see them. Even Facebook members are not guaranteed to see it unless they look for it.

3) You have no idea what changes a social media site will make to their service and how that will impact your ability to connect with people on the platform

In the same vein as "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take", you don't connect with 100% of the people who aren't on a social media site when you post there. 

Posting on your own website/blog and then syndicating your content to social media sites means that people can access your content regardless of where they look for it. 

Most blogs support RSS/Atom and can be indexed by search engines. Social media sites don't and their business model makes no sense by allowing your content to be seen and indexed off of their site.

[Jeff]

On 9/9/2023 at 9:13 AM, Zac said:

I was looking through the Well and this forum for some information on Talor and it should also be noted that nothing that is on Facebook is indexed. And even on Facebook their search engine is notoriously bad. 

Edit: yes, I really dislike Facebook. 🙂

Funny that. I find it far easier to search our FB Group than BRP Central.

[Zac]

10 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Funny that. I find it far easier to search our FB Group than BRP Central.

Search is a funny thing on Facebook. It seems to work better for things that people you know have liked or are fans of. So finding a group is easier if people you know are part of it or have liked content form it.

[SDLeary]

10 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If you are a Facebook member of the Runequest Group, and you haven't noticed much lately due to their mysterious algorithm, you can always click on the group to see recent posts from that group.  Sometimes I have to do that.

As for privacy etc., yes, there are concerns.  😞

This is true. But you would think that if you've "Followed" or "Joined" something that the algorithm would be changed slightly. And it may, in fact, change ever so so slightly, but not enough to be noticeable. I get far more Far Side (which I'm actually NOT complaining about) in my feed, and I haven't followed that; compared to all the groups that I have joined or followed combined. That's odd. 

Even when I pop into the groups, it's hard to parse much as there are generally NO titles to any of the posts, so you have to begin to actually read what's written. Do this enough, and all of a sudden you are out of reading time and really haven't gained much that you might be interested in. For example, I'm pretty certain that I have only seen probably a tenth of the things that @Jeff posts. 

Its just a poor design as an information resource.

SDLeary

[SDLeary]

7 hours ago, Zac said:

Posting on your own website/blog and then syndicating your content to social media sites means that people can access your content regardless of where they look for it. 

 

Speaking of which, there used to be apps that allowed you to blog, and then have that entry be copied over to other sites. I think (dim memory) that there was one of these that would even split up an entry to fit Twit...'s post limit (when that was a thing).

Don't these still exist? Do they not work with Facebook?

SDLeary

[Steve]

Horses. For. Courses.

[Akhôrahil]

9 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Speaking of which, there used to be apps that allowed you to blog, and then have that entry be copied over to other sites. I think (dim memory) that there was one of these that would even split up an entry to fit Twit...'s post limit (when that was a thing).

Blog then repost would be a good solution, if it can be reasonably automated and look acceptable.

[g33k]

15 hours ago, Zac said:

Search is a funny thing on Facebook...

This.
Except, I'm not laughing.

FB algorithms are really, really sucky.
I'm an amateur photographer, and active in several related FB groups; FB algorithms (to my absolutely-certain knowledge) censor perfectly-innocuous & innocent content, but allow borderline-porn to slip through.

In other contexts, I have experienced both old FB content being "necro'ed" (randomly-promoted to currency), and current / time-sensitive content being delayed by FB until it was no longer relevant.

Edited September 11 by g33k

[Zac]

13 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Speaking of which, there used to be apps that allowed you to blog, and then have that entry be copied over to other sites. I think (dim memory) that there was one of these that would even split up an entry to fit Twit...'s post limit (when that was a thing).

Don't these still exist? Do they not work with Facebook?

I wrote a bit about this on my blog yesterday

https://whatiswrongwithyourdog.netlify.app/posts/posse/

I've actually worked with a few publishers on building workflows to support a POSSE system.

Most social media platforms have cut API access (X/Twitter) or restricted it (Facebook) so it isn't as simple as it used to be. 

[Zac]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

FB algorithms are really, really sucky.

I think the problem is that everything on Facebook is connected to a user's "social graph". So it returns results based on things that your friends like or share. 

I once had to ask for a link to a Facebook group because I could not find it using search.