Do you like being TOLD what you are allowed to read?

Social media algorithms are hurting us, can you help make NewsThump less reliant on them? [View this email in your browser]( [NewsThump Website Header]( [Support NewsThump HERE]( Hello Do you like tales of injustice, where the small, pluckly underdog is being crushed under the heel of the evil giant who wants to rule everything? Good. We think you’re going to like this email. This week, we posted a joke about the Tories fielding a candidate in the Wellinborough by-election who is the girlfriend of the Tory MP who was forced to vacate that very same seat due to a report on their bullying and sexual misconduct. It was just a silly joke about how unhappy the Conservative party is about a precedent which might prevent them handing top jobs to the people they’re sleeping with.  However, Facebook did NOT like it. At ALL. The article touched on several political hot topics, and Facebook’s algorithm meant its circulation ground to a halt when it was seen by less than 1% of our Facebook followers. Facebook simply killed it dead because it was about a subject - politics - that they don’t like you seeing. This is a shame, because the VAST majority of people who saw it, really liked it.  We hope you saw it in your daily tea time summary on Friday. However, this is what social media has become; algorithms have determined what you want to see, and what you don't, and now it will make those decisions for you. This means that any time we make a joke about a politician, or someone who works in politics, VERY FEW of our social media followers (people like you) get to see it.  This week it was 1% when we mentioned elections, but it was 25 times that number when we joked about a bigot being unhappy after finding out he’d accidentally used a “gender neutral” toilet. Facebook does NOT want us joking about politics (this isn’t a secret or conspiracy by the way; they’re very open about it, even if they [don’t promote it](. Facebook is actively encouraging us to make more jokes about cats, people who load the dishwasher incorrectly, school photos, or puns around 80s chart hits. And it will only get worse as we near a general election. We’ll probably be able to count the people who see our posts by then on one hand! Now, we all 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 to our newsletter, which you have clearly already done - go you! That means we’re already sending you our short 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. We spent years building that audience, and now we can’t even talk to them unless it’s about “approved” subjects. You can help us end that reliance on social media 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 to pay the bills first.  For the price of a single mediocre coffee, you can give us the freedom to mock whoever is deserving of ridicule on any given day - whether they be a politician, lobbyist, businessman or entertainer. In return for your support , we will give you: - Access to EVERYTHING we do, completely AD-FREE! - 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 remove all advertising from our site and stop worrying about social media algorithms, writing with complete freedom from tomorrow. But we are still some way from 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 for 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) 2024 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](