Social media suck
I am so fucking tired of social media platforms that do not operate in ways that are supportive of artists.
I have already discussed, ad nauseum, my disgust with censorship of art. But even the hoops you have to jump through to post on sites is an ever-evolving challenge.
It's always been frustrating that different sites have different optimal sizes for posting images, for example. It's less of an issue than it used to be, but for a long time, if you posted an image at a different size from how the platform would display it, that platform would resize your image very badly, and your photo would look terrible. For along time, Facebook's optimal size has been 2048 pixels on the longest dimension. But that number keeps changing, at random, without warning or explanation, and no one can keep up with it. Google "optimal size Facebook" and no one seems to know what the right dimensions are. One site says "1200x628 pixels is ideal," while another says 1200x630, another says 1080x1350, another says 820x312 (which is tiny!), another days 1920x1005, another says 820x462, and yet another 2048 pixels wide regardless of whether your image is oriented landscape or portrait. What the hell is a creator supposed to do with such confusion?
Above: Relative size and aspect of Facebook vs Instagram photos
And regardless of what Facebook is, Instagram is usually different--most recently 1080 pixels wide, 1350 pixels tall, whichever is most restrictive. And they throw in an additional curve ball, which is that the aspect ratio (width to height) can't be more than 4:5. Which means that if your photo is 2:3 (typical for digital photos with professional cameras), you have to crop your image before Instagram will even accept it. So not only are you ruining your art by putting censor bars over it, you're also arbitrarily cutting off the top and bottom of the photo, as if it were irrelevant.
Above: Uncropped image, vs forced crop for Instagram
So for every photo you post, you have to create multiple versions for different media.
At least Meta, which runs both Facebook and Instagram, has allowed users to pre-schedule posts, which is a lot more convenient than trying to make live posts every single day when you have a busy schedule. I've been scheduling my posts 2-6 weeks in advance, taking time around the middle of each month to schedule posts for the following month.
But today, when I went to schedule posts for July (yes, June has been busy, and I'm a lot later scheduling posts than I usually am), I got partway through the month and was not able to post for the end of July. So I looked it up and now Meta only allows posts up to 29 days in advance. What the fuck! So now I can't schedule posts 6 weeks in advance anymore, I can only do 4 weeks and 1 day (why 29 days?? that's so random). That's more work and harder to keep track of. And again, no notice or explanation. Why the hell do they care, and why are they making my life harder?
And don't even get me started on Twitter. I've stuck with Twitter for a long time, despite the shenanigans of new owner Elon Musk, because Twitter is very liberal about censoring art, and in fact is the only existing platform with wide reach where I can post my art unmutilated. But my god, Twitter has devolved into a cesspool, and with Elon Musk now gone full-on right-wing fascist in his ideology, saying things like "cisgender is a slur and will be treated as such on Twitter," I can't even control my gag reflex any more. Time to exit.
OK, this has been a rant of the highest order, and honestly, probably no one cares about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into maintaining high quality social media feeds. But it feels good to get it off my chest.