Good afternoon lovers of art and freedom,
For the past six months Iโve dealt with heavy shadow banning on all social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). My engagement has only been reaching about 5% of my following to the point that many of my peers and inner circle have reached out wondering why I haven't posted any new content.
I have, it just doesnโt show up in your feed.
Needless to say, this is effecting my business and professional growth. Iโve even received dozens of messages inquiring about Community Guideline warnings and strikes when trying to mention my name when tagging.
Did I threaten anyone with physical violence? No.
Is anything I share discriminatory, racist or homophobic? No.
Am I intentionally spreading fake news? No.
The reality is that we consistently try to measure the crossed line yet unknowingly justify the blatant cancel culture from the Left with compassion in the form of rationalization.
But itโs actually much simpler, they are bigots.
Itโs the same recent story across the country of brave voices being silenced when speaking up against the medical apartheid of COVID-19. Itโs the same situation I dealt with when being blacklisted by the NYC art world for having the wrong opinions. Shutting us up is the only way they can sleep at night because they canโt engage us due to the fallibility of their positions. And regardless of the scale of your following they have designed a system to dismantle your relevance under the guise of inclusion. Ultimately they just want to feel normal, to have everyone as ugly as they are to hide the pain they live with inside.
The less experienced will say, โGo to Truth Social. Or Parler!โ
But they aren't there yet, and its the wrong approach in the first place - go where the fight is and work around it during the lulls.
That said, remember a set back is a setup for a comeback.
I will be spending a lot more time here on substack moving forward because of their adamant stance on free speech.
I encourage you all to become paid subscribers to get a deeper behind the scenes inside my art studio whilst supporting the production of art in the cultural front that promotes these shared values.
At $15 a month you get multiple writings, critiques and reviews weekly. For those of you who join the Inner Circle - there is a plethora of perks including an annual randomly selected sketchbook page that you personally receive for your home. My sketchbooks are a personal diary that vulnerably show a wider spectrum of styles and experimentation, I usually keep these illustrations private.
If modern liberation begins with digital martyrdom, a big congratulations to me.
As usual thank you for taking the time, I hope to see you on the other side.
Arthur Kwon Lee
I'm probably not offering any insight you don't already have, but it could just be that the algorithms/social-media marketplaces are changing. For instance, videos on Facebook used to garner exponentially more views, but now, they're pathetically disengaging, according to the metrics, and memes and flat images are the new videos, gaining--at least, for me--ridiculous traction. Or, like you said, it could just be shadowbanning, but if you haven't already, I'd suggest doing a little digging into trends to see what's up. Peace and love, Arthur!
Thank you Herbert, actually, Meta sent me direct emails on the matter. First telling me that all of my stories and posts would be way down at the bottom for scrolling, the next email I got was a warning towards suspension as well as my content not even showing up.๏ฟผ