IG and shadow banning/censoring

As a person with no facebook, twitter or IG, would you mind telling me what the basis for the action is? My social media is pretty much confined to BF and one other site dedicated to firearms, LE and related sundry matters.


ETA: Never mind, I get the gist.
 
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REK Knives said:
Yes I see where you are coming from, but the goal of every knife maker who wants to grow/expand is to reach NEW customers. If we are just stuck with our regular followers then you will never grow.



That is true and I generally agree that it's not healthy, especially to feed our ego. For me personally I could care less about followers or views EXCEPT for a few things...

1. It may help be an indicator as to whether you are on the right path for a design that potentially has a lot of demand
2. what I want is people to subscribe to my newsletter because they are the ones who are serious in following my work and this way I would have a direct line of communication to them. You could have a post that goes viral and has a million views because people think something you showed looks cool but not have a single sale.



That's the whole point though... you are indicating you want to build your customer base (as do I). Bladeforums shouldn't be the ONLY place we do that though, it's just one avenue of many. In the grand scheme of things the BFC isn't that large compared to the potential followers on social media. In other words, I would like to do the one (bladeforums) while also doing the other (other platforms) and not be censored/shadow banned while I share my work.

While having your account restricted may not mean you lose followers, it does mean you are losing potential followers.



It may not be an issue for you or some other knife makers, but for me I've been doing this full time since 2015 and EVERYTHING I do is online. So building my customer base is important to me as I expand and continue to grow my business.
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I really jive with what I bolded above^

For some context, I'm just starting my career in the knife biz- starting year three in 2024. The main reason I decided against pinning any success in sales to ig or fb, at least until I come up with a more holistic strategy, (that's on the whiteboard for '24) is because those are both for profit corporations. Relying on some corporate service to provide me with customers isn't really something I'm down with at the moment, especially when there is literally no sense of partnership and mutual self interest. I use those social media sites mostly to keep a record of my work. People who are interested in who they're dealing with just gotta scroll the profile to get a sense of what I do.

Hey, anyone talking about censorship here- it's not! What gets posted, in general, is up to management. We all agree to participate, knowing, (some of us more than others) what we are sacrificing in return. In social media, we are the product- we consume ourselves!

I try and direct people to Bladeforums whenever possible. I think forums are a real viable alternative going forward, even though everyone said they'd die off when the corporate alternative became available, but here we all are plus a lot of new folk over the years.

Instead of dealing with a corporate overlord, here we all contribute something that makes this a community, and an amazing repository for all things cutlery related. I'm proud to be associated with Bladeforums
 
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You know...

If Spark found a way that we could purchase a subforum and implement a true storefront here on BF, I'd be the first in line with cash in hand.

Just saying.
 
Lorien said:
I try and direct people to Bladeforums whenever possible. I think forums are a real viable alternative going forward, even though everyone said they'd die off when the corporate alternative became available, but here we all are plus a lot of new folk over the years.

Instead of dealing with a corporate overlord, here we all contribute something that makes this a community, and an amazing repository for all things cutlery related. I'm proud to be associated with Bladeforums
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How many knives so far you sell here on Bladeforums ?
 
Whenever I access Insta, there is a header offering a verified ID (at a cost), just like Twitter used to push.

Oh, I posted a link to my Insta page on a YouTube post involving knives and YouTube claimed I violated their TOS. Because Youtube is owned by Google and Instagram is owned by Facebook, and Google and Facebook/Zuckerberg are at war. lol
 
Fixall said:
You know...

If Spark found a way that we could purchase a subforum and implement a true storefront here on BF, I'd be the first in line with cash in hand.

Just saying.
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I think that is pretty much what the Hosted Forums are. They are private sub-forums for a knifemaker to host themselves. Some offer knives directly there, but most link to their website sales.
 
I was reading that it was one of those "AI" bots implementing the soft ban ... it was flagging anything looking like a "weapon" I appealed mine and was reinstated within hours.

IG has always sucked for me in terms of sales...it cant be beat for quickly sharing photos though....

is there a way to post direct links in threads, the way photobucket or imgur works? that would be AWESOME.
 
IG has been really good for sales for me, almost to good as most of the IG sales also involved plenty of knife chit chat which is getting old.

I actually quite IG for over a year as I just got tired of the platform and all the look at me people.
 
Morning Josh / REK Knives REK Knives -

most people search Instagram via Google. When I google, e.g., "REK Ember", the hits come like this:

1:https://rekknives.com
2:https://rek-products.myshopify.com
3:https://www.bladeforums.com
4:https://www.youtube.com
5:https://www.instagram.com
6:https://www.reddit.com
7:https://vimeo.com
: : :

Not bad, I feel.

BTW, I like your mailing list, and Lorien Lorien - yours too ! Maybe you guys could ask your mailing list members to invite friends ? Just a thought.

Best,

Roland.
 
ferider said:
Morning Josh / REK Knives REK Knives -

most people search Instagram via Google. When I google, e.g., "REK Ember", the hits come like this:

1:https://rekknives.com
2:https://rek-products.myshopify.com
3:https://www.bladeforums.com
4:https://www.youtube.com
5:https://www.instagram.com
6:https://www.reddit.com
7:https://vimeo.com
: : :

Not bad, I feel.

BTW, I like your mailing list, and Lorien Lorien - yours too ! Maybe you guys could ask your mailing list members to invite friends ? Just a thought.

Best,

Roland.
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right on, Roland- great point! My strategy is to work toward building deeper connections with my patrons and focus more on quality than on quantity. I'm really not set up to make large amounts of knives and I don't think that's where I want my primary focus to be at this time anyway.

That said, I am gearing up to do a large run of simple one piece knives in 2024, up to 100 or so. I might sell a few via ig and fb, but I expect many of them to sell here, and hopefully a good number locally, as setting up at local craft fairs etc, which is another avenue that fits into my plan.

Most of the interactions I've had on ig and fb have been with looky loos, scammers and probably bots, all of which waste my time, and time is all I got! None of it's for wasting.
 
timos- said:
is there a way to post direct links in threads, the way photobucket or imgur works? that would be AWESOME.
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Sure thing - I'm hoping this doesn't run afoul of rules about posting links since I've NEVER sold a knife via IG, nor is there anything about sales on this post. This is for educational purpose only. Click on this link and it should take you to the link, even if you don't have an IG acct.

Well, that link didn't post as I thought it would Check this one.... well, that didn't work either. While it doesn't need an IG acct to come up, it does bring up my IG page and I don't think that's allowed on this site.

If you save the post so it appears in your "Saved" section. Open the link and use the URL and that will allow other folks to see the post, and to looks like you total IG pages, with the linked post being at top.
 
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welll, its back to being a soft ban for me and many knifemakers.....one of my handle posts got soft banned for possibly being too sexual/nude so , im taking that as a compliment.
 
If I had to guess, it would be related to the new regulations put in place by Canada and the EU. They've had a real stiffy lately for cracking down on any kind of knife or gun content. Knowing IG, they probably just put a blanket restriction on everything regardless of where it is.
 
Just chiming in to say that I was able to find REK Knives REK Knives and Fixall Fixall IG accounts and follow from the search tab!

... But maybe I could only find them because I was already following accounts who were following them, who knows.
 
The_Iron_Joe said:
Just chiming in to say that I was able to find REK Knives REK Knives and Fixall Fixall IG accounts and follow from the search tab!

... But maybe I could only find them because I was already following accounts who were following them, who knows.
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I've appealed each of my soft-bans (up to four now), and they've been overturned within 24 hours each time. That process is working at least. :)
 
Just found this thread as my IG account was also flagged, already appealed, hopefully they fix the issue, I post only culinary knives...

Pablo
 
I’ve been restricted for over 2 weeks now and tried appealing 6-7 times with no change and I mostly post culinary knives. At this point it seems they are taking an even harder stance against knives of any type. I’ve even had process content get flagged like me grinding a kitchen knife or shaping handles.
 
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