February squish factor

Every month I tally up how many views my fresh posts garnered at Blogger compared to Before It's News.

In theory, since I publish on Blogger, the biggest blog host on the web, the looks there should by far outstrip the views at Before It's News, where I'm stashed in the fringe back corner on what's already a fringe website.

However, Google loads up its Blogger platform with a gauntlet of all sorts of algorithms designed to protect the public by squishing misinformation, disinformation, Putin's propaganda, Chinese propaganda, Iranian propaganda... in fact, any propaganda whatsoever unless it's US propaganda, and any other ideas that do not pass the the current groupthink sniff test.

In February I posted 34 stories on Blogger. Before It's News reposted 33 of them.

Views on Blogger; avg of 16.5 views per post for a total of 560.

Views on Before It's News; avg of 77 per post for a total of 2,554.

Algorithms at work!

 

The one that got away

From time to time the half dozen or so regulars to this blog have heard me whine about how I'm being sandbagged by algorithms.

I'm not exactly sure how those things work, but it's obvious that they do. Too much crazy talk dissing US Exceptionalism seems to get the attention of these creatures.

What I find curious is that one particular post from a few years ago has by far outstripped any other of the five thousand plus posts that I have, to my dismay, birthed from Falling Downs. This particular post has over 15,000 looks, about ten times as many as the nearest runner up. If that was a book it would be a best-seller!

But why?

Reading it again four years later, I find it more or less stands the test of time. Name-dropping Heiner Muller into it was perhaps a little dilettantish, but overall it's a good solid piece of political commentary.


Here's the mystery; I've got hundreds of posts that are as good or better, that never got 150 views, never mind 15,000. Somehow this one slipped past the gate-keepers.