A Letter to Mark Zuckerberg

Dear Mark: Instagram is not what it used to be and you need to make it safer before we will buy any advertising on your platform. Sincerely, alexd CEO/tribe Gatekeepers control the free flow of information on the Internet for their own benefit, not yours or mine. If you are a Canadian business and choose to post your content on Meta products, they now suppress the discovery of your content, which is the complete opposite of virality, in order to drive you to buy advertising on the platform. They've convinced users over time that our posted content 'could' go viral. It won't, but a lot of us still feel it might. This Meta brainwashing is exactly what drives smaller businesses to buy ads on the Insta slot machine wheel. The 'hope' of creating virality for your content on the platform with advertising is a false hope. Does gambling like this sound like a smart marketing plan for any business or artist? We can choose not to design or produce content for Mark Zuckerberg, until he stops filling his platform with toxic commercial content that causes teens to cut themselves, to kill themselves. We can choose to kick Zuckerberg to the curb and this is what I will be doing here at tribe. In Canada, small and medium sized business and artists have a larger problem and an even worse gatekeeper: our own government. The Canadian government's new media control law C-18 has triggered Meta to block Canadian online content at scale, so even if a Canadian content provider buy ads on the platform, there is really no guarantee the ads will ever be seen in Canada, or anywhere else. In this podcast I explain why virality doesn't exist on Instagram or any Meta product anymore, and why it isn't wise to use Instagram or any Meta product as your single marketing channel. Produce content for yourself and your customers, not for Instagram or Mark Zuckerberg. Media Mentioned: Pivot Podcast: https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/pivot Prof G Podcast: https://profgmedia.com/the-pod/ Prof Michael Geist: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/blog/ Painting with John: https://www.hbo.com/painting-with-john Books Mentioned: Rings For The Finger by George Frederick Kunz (1917) Complete Metalsmith: Professional Edition by Tim McCreight Practical Casting by Tim McCreight The Cannabis Goldsmith - A Show About Jewelry, is an Art & Design podcast produced by tribe communications inc. in the 1000 Islands area of Ontario, Canada. Tribe is a member of the Canadian Jewellers Association and an Authorized User of Canada's National Precious Metals Mark. (c) tribe 2023 (R) tribe is a registered trademark