Blog status update (March 2024)
Time again for another blog status update post.
Dropping Google ads (again)
For those visiting my site with their ad blocker turned off, you’ll notice I’ve turned off Google ads, at least for now. Google’s own downsides aside, there’s also that the amount of revenue from Google ads has declined, even by my meager standards. I’d sometimes meet Google’s $100 minimum payout level about once a year (if lucky). However, at the current rate, I wasn’t meeting even that. Thus, I figured I’d save on the site code/load speed and ditch Google’s ads for now.
If interested in supporting my site financially, I still have my Ko-fi page.
Social media status
Since my last blog status update post last fall, I’ve stuck with several social networks: Facebook, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Lately, I’ve also considered making more use of my relatively dormant Pixelfed account (as an Instagram replacement/a way to display my occasional photos in one place). But otherwise, I think my social media usage is set for now. There isn’t a point in loading up on an excessive number of social networks, anyway: it’d be too much work to maintain that many; I don't exactly have a large following online; and some of the newer social networks seem to be chasing the same problematic business models as Twitter/Facebook (see: Cory Doctorow’s term “ensh*ttification,” or “platform decay” as a less crude term).
As for the idea of “deleting Facebook,” my reasons for keeping it around:
I figure I should have at least one token mainstream social network.
Facebook lets me post external links (unlike Instagram).
Out of the paltry just-under-2% of site traffic that comes from social media (checking the past month’s site stats), all of it’s from Twitter (for some reason), Bluesky, and… Facebook. I assume some also comes from Mastodon, but I don’t see any Mastodon-related URLs appear in Matomo.
I still have a personal Facebook profile to follow family/online friends who won’t use anything else.