how social media algorithms punish artists for trying

source: Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

social media algorithms are terrible for artists

I’m disgusted with the current state of social media and its algorithms, both as a viewer and an artist. Everyone already knows that social media platforms are actively engineered to be harmful to our mental health. However, social media platforms are a special kind of terrible for online artists.

For both hobbyists and professionals who depend on these websites to find an audience, it’s a miserable experience trying to navigate these exploitative apps to try to reach an audience. Many artists, such as myself, have blamed ourselves for not being able to crack the code to success on these platforms.

it’s not your fault

I’ve wasted so much time trying to appease the algorithm gods in hopes to get views, mostly with varying degrees of unsuccess. I used to find this very discouraging. I find it easier to be motivated to draw when I am able to share my work with others. I found myself doubting my skills as an artist. Am I drawing what people want to see? Maybe people aren’t seeing my work because better art is being promoted over my own. Will I ever be a good enough artist to merit views and likes?

However, it’s not our fault, even if it might seem that way. Social media platforms are not designed in favor of artists or users at all. The opposite is true. These apps are designed to make the most amount of money possible at the users’ expense. Low quality/low effort garbage such as content farms/AI, disinformation, and ragebait is shoved into our feeds, even if we don’t want to see it. It’s more profitable to these corporations to promote low effort, low quality, high quantity addictive garbage than actually good content that takes time to produce.

It keeps getting worse

None of these problems with social media are unique to artists. People who actually give a crap about making good content online probably aren’t finding success in the current social media landscape. The few who did have either: worked hard for several years with no success, already have connections, or are simply lucky.

Every year social media hits a new rock bottom. Now not only do artists have to worry about social media algorithms burying our posts, but companies like Meta and Google stealing our data to use to train their AI. However, I’m still active on some of these sites, despite all of the disadvantages. I like discovering other artists and talented creators on the Internet, who mostly don’t have their own websites. And even though I have my own site now, it’s really difficult as an independent creator to get attention to a site with no social media presence. Google now hides small websites from its search results and most people don’t actively seek out new websites to visit.

taking control of my internet presence

I am no longer trying to work for YouTube or TikTok or any other social media company for free anymore. Now that I have my own website, that is my own domain that I control. I don’t have to worry about buried by algorithms I don’t control, or my drawings getting banned from TikTok anymore (which has happened before at least twice for mysterious reasons).

While my website gets less views than a social media profile would, the viewers engaging with my website are on average more interested and engaged in my work than some random TikTok scroller. I would rather have less views from a few people that are actually interested in my work than getting thousands of views on social media who have little interest in my work. I am finally free to actually focus on my art and making it good.