Richard V. Rupp

December 7, 2020

Hello World. Like most, if not all of you, I am looking forward to the end of 2020. With a vaccine in sight, hopefully, 2021 will be a better year. GOD, don't make it a worse one.

I have noted that many authors like me produce a periodic newsletter or post to expand their reading audience. Besides talking about their books, most of my fellow authors will include comments on gardening, cooking, sewing, the local weather, or some cutesy subject. I suspect they select these things to talk about because they are safe. Not controversial. They won't antagonize current or future readers of their works. Or, maybe it's because they don't want to trigger the Facebook mysterious algorithms. I'm not really a cutesy type of person, so I like to address things I see in the current news or that are happening in the real world. When doing this, I try my best to avoid advocating something or taking a political stance, as I also do not want to antagonize current or future readers. My last post, ORDERED HIBERNATION, has put me back on the FB bad guys list.

I noted in my latest copy of "THE WEEK" that I'm not alone on the FB bad guys list. I reproduce the article titled "Small businesses battle Facebook" here –

"Struggling small businesses are losing sales when Facebook mistakenly bans their ads, said Sarah Frier in Bloomberg.com. One New York-based purveyor of honey and beeswax products said she lost $5,000 in revenue because Facebook's algorithm mysteriously 'blocked her ad account for violating its policies.' Face book has been automating its content moderation for years. But in the effort to clean up its platform in recent weeks, it's been sweeping up innocent businesses. 'They turned up the AI recently,' says one online marketing expert, 'and all of a sudden, everybody was getting shut down.' A ban on political ads, for instance, has 'affected companies that have no connection to politics,' such as a business that sells 'bracelets to benefit refugees.'"

I'm sure the words beeswax and refugees did it.

So on to politics. I wish the two political parties could get along and accomplish something. Because of the recent candidates both sides have offered up for us to vote on, I have a suggestion. We need more candidates to select from, so I believe the two parties should be split into two. For the Republicans – Moderate and Conservative. For the Democrats Moderate and Liberal. Maybe that would give us better choices, and possibly there would be more cooperation between the Moderate parties, and some legislation would get passed.

How much do you want to bet that FB will not allow me to BOOST this post in an attempt to expand my readership?

Cheers,

Richard V. Rupp, Author