Instead of FaceBook, I'll be Posting Diabetes Tidbits in the Comment Section of Monthly Posts

I've had it with FaceBook. I can't control the ads they show people who come to my page, which are invariably for scams that prey on people with diabetes. I'm tired of channeling a steady flow of people with diabetes into the greedy hands of FaceBooks's abusive advertisers.

Even worse, after I had recruited 1700+ people to my FB page, FB stopped showing most of them my updates, telling me I'd have to pay upwards of $100 each time I posted if I wanted the people who had subscribed to my page to see these updates.

FaceBook's belief that they have a right to spam people who like my page with damaging ads while withholding the useful information I was posting from these same subscribers is criminal.

And to add insult to injury, since FB scrolls posts into hiding very fast, much of what I have posted over the past two years has for all practical purposes vanished and is not accessible via search engine, further ensuring that people won't ever see it.

So I will be killing the FaceB ookBlood Sugar 101 page,  if that is possible, and posting new material only in places where I control the advertising and where I can be sure that everyone who subscribes will see the feed.

This blog and my web pages are under my control and the blog, unlike FaceBook posts, is fully searchable by Google, which means that hundreds and sometimes even thousands of people get to read the posts I put on the blog, even years after they are made. (Right now the page about Metformin I posted back in 2006 is among the top 3 pages visited on this blog each month, and it still gets a comment or two every week.)

I like having a place to note small bits of Diabetes news that didn't rise to the level of needing a full blog post. That is why I stuck with the FB page even after they started cutting down on who could see the page. So to continue being able to feature news snippets what I've decided to do is this:

Each month I will start a new post here on this blog in which I will post the month's minor news items in the comments section. Visitors are free to comment on these snippets, though I will ask that you keep your comments short and limited to the subject of the latest snippet. Comments that don't follow this guideline will not be made public.  

I know this will cut down on the number of people who see my posts, but the comments on my FB page make it very clear that very few people who have liked the page have bothered to check out any of the substantive information available on the Blood Sugar 101 web site.

Since FB's format makes it impossible to conduct ongoing discussions in a way where people can easily follow them, the page failed in its goal, which was to help spread the information available on the main site and help people improve their health.

To ensure you get the monthly post and comments, you can subscribe to the blog (or its comments, separately) via a blog reader like The Old Reader or Feedly.

For those of you who wonder why I have been posting so few substantive blog posts of late, the reason is simple. There is very little news that comes up that hasn't already been discussed in an earlier post here on this blog.

There are currently 552 posts on this blog, which you can search using the search box you will find in the right hand column of this page. They discuss just about every topic that comes up in the news, whether it be the worthlessness of rodent research, the problems with the A1c test, or the value of various drugs and surgeries.

So for most new news items, all that is required on my part is a line or two of comment. The substantive discussions on related topics are already available here and life is too short for me to spend many hours of my day rewriting them for people too lazy to look them up!

--Jenny