There is a 99% chance you didn't see this joke

Social media algorithms are hurting us, can you help make NewsThump less reliant on them? [View this email in your browser]( [NewsThump Website Header]( Hello Yesterday morning we posted a spoof apology to a certain frog-faced moron-herder (yes, Nigel Farage) on Facebook.  It reached hardly any of our social media followers. So we posted it again an hour later, but this time we didn't mention him by name, and it reached almost TEN TIMES as many people. This is what social media has become; algorithms have determined what you want to see, and what you don't, and now it makes that decision for you. That means any time we make a joke about a politician, or someone who works in politics, VERY FEW of our social media followers get to see it.  Yesterday, it was 1% when we mentioned Nigel Farage by name, ten times that number when we didn’t. The images below show the reach for each post. As you can see above, non-topical jokes - or jokes the algorithm can’t tell are mocking political subjects - can reach ten to twenty times as many people. Facebook is encouraging us to make more jokes about cats, people who load the dishwasher incorrectly, or puns around 80s chart hits. And it will only get worse as the incumbent government nears the end of its term and calls a general election. We’ll probably be able to count the people who see our posts by then on one hand! Now, we enjoy a bit of whimsical humour as much as the next person, and we like making those non-topical jokes from time to time, but we're ultimately a topical satire site. We WANT to mock the people in the news, but that's incredibly hard to do when your followers don’t see any of your jokes if the joke itself involves politics. So what can we do? Well, some good news! The first thing you can do is subscribe the our newsletter, which you have already done - go you! That means we’re already sending you our headline round up at the end of each working day. An excellent first step! However, we STILL rely on the traffic sent our way by social media platforms to pay the bills each month. You can help us end that reliance by taking out a small paid subscription to our site, and helping reduce the power platforms like Facebook and Twitter have over us.  EVERY paid supporter brings us closer to the day when we can write what we like, and mock whoever we like, without worrying whether we should avoid the subject altogether because we have bills to pay the bills first.  For the price of a mediocre coffee you can give us the freedom to mock whoever is deserving of ridicule on any given day - whether they be politician, lobbyist, businessman or entertainer. In return for your support , we will give you: - Access to EVERYTHING we do, completely AD-FREE! - Exclusive access to the subscriber-only Facebook group with hidden extras - Exclusive subscriber-only stories on the NewsThump website - Regular email updates from the editor - A personal discount code for the NewsThump Shop - Our heartfelt thanks for supporting our efforts to mock our nation’s leaders [Support NewsThump HERE]( If everyone who enjoyed a NewsThump story at least once a week supported us with a small subscription, then we could stop worrying about social media algorithms and write with complete freedom from tomorrow. But we are only about halfway to our target of having enough supporters to ensure we can pay our bills every month, and we hope you will consider becoming one of them. Your support would allow us to continue in our mission to eventually mock every deserving powerful person, wherever they may be. We understand times are tough, and if you genuinely can’t afford to support us, or are faced with the choice between putting food on the table or helping us to make jokes about our leaders on the Internet - then obviously PLEASE don’t worry! We would be delighted to continue entertaining you as a free ad-supported subscriber as long as you enjoy reading what we do. However, if you CAN spare the price of a coffee to help us stick two fingers up to our social media overlords, then we would be forever grateful. Click below to support NewsThump today. Thank you! Managing Editor NewsThump.com [Support NewsThump HERE]( Copyright (C) 2023 Thump Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you asked us to send you a daily summary of NewsThump's headlines. A wise choice, may we add. Our mailing address is: Thump Publishing Limited 40 Caversham RoadReading, Berkshire RG1 7BT United Kingdom [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe](