🐑 You're The Passenger

A month ago, a singer-songwriter that I’ve been a fan of for probably 20 years or so died in a house fire.

Her manager shared this on her Facebook page, which I follow, before the news came out.

Horrific, right? It was news that stunned me and I spent some time reading through the comments on the post.

In the days that followed, my Facebook feed was no longer my own. It was full of posts by random singers, celebrities, radio stations, music venues, etc. all sharing their feelings about her death.

I don’t care what Margaret Cho thinks about it, but for two weeks I saw every post she made about it.

This week, my Facebook feed is full of posts about the charity concert and celebration of life events that happened in her honor.

It’s been such an interesting look into to the Facebook algorithm. And a good reminder.

We Aren’t In Control

I probably spend more time than is healthy thinking about how the tactics we use to grow Facebook pages for money is often kinda gross.

For example, when I was running a Likes ad campaign for my garden page I was able to lower the cost by using an AI image of an obviously fake flower/plant. Old people, who didn’t know any better, were often commenting and asking where they could buy it.

Anyways, those are my demons so please don’t think I’m judging what anyone else does with their Facebook pages.

What’s got me thinking about all of this is an interesting article that I read this morning about algorithms, machine learning, and autonomy. It’s on a Substack newsletter, but you don’t have to sign up to read it.

You can read it here.

Coming up…

More on what I’m working on and how it’s going.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for over a year now (I think?) and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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