BUFFSCAN
Why People Gotta Log In to View My X Stuff?
02/24/2024
Update 2/27/24 - This issue has prompted me to complete a full jump to @Threads. From now on BuffScan microblogging can be reviewed and subscribed to at @BuffaloScan. Note the variation in spelling ("BuffaloScan", not "BuffScan").
I recently discovered that my X content isn't accessible unless you log into X. I have two X accounts and this problem applies to both of them.
Neither account is set to privatize my content, either.
It's obviously a bug but there doesn't seem to be a clear path to reporting it, particularly if you're not a paying user of X. They do have a help and support center but all of the boilerplate forms one would submit don't apply to this particular situation.
As a bug, I suspect it's tied to X's activity over last summer when they did in fact try to force people to log in in order to view people's feeds. They rolled that back pretty quick, but maybe something about my accounts got left behind.
I'm basically de-platformed on X -- at least to the extent that I can't microblog to the random world at large. Ironically, I have no problem taking my borderline mental illness rants to Threads for my personal account or new projects, but BuffaloScan on X has almost 500 subscribers that I'd like to keep my reach with. And, while I am enamored by Threads, despite whatever issues X has with its stability (as a service, and the particular man running it), I still think X the most evolved and feature reach microblogging tool on the market, if using one is important. I'd like to have it as an option while I continue to weigh which service I intend to ultimately run with if either.
Otherwise, I guess X is making the decision for me.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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The Slowest Roll Out Ever: The BuffScan Subreddit
01/01/2024
Quite some time ago I posted some dramatic BuffScan content to r/Buffalo/ on Reddit. Because I had done so more than a few times, another Reddit user suggested creating a new subreddit to host that sort of content.
That actually seemed like a good idea - no offense was taken since I sort of view /r/Buffalo to be like a free-form "Good Morning America" for Buffalo to some degree -- not a place where people necessarily seek direct contact with the sort of drama I sometimes post. So I did it.
Behold /r/BuffScan/.
But that was actually about two years ago and although I had gone through with the basic creation of the group, I didn't develop or advertise it much.
Now with some holiday time off, I finally did and am -- at least to the extent that I wrote out a group description and some pretty basic rules.
I encourage anyone who has collected content to make at least a secondary post in the subreddit outside their primary platform of choice. I myself will post some legacy stuff in addition to moving forward, just to prime the machine. As well, I'll post public links to content that others make available online of the same genre.
I am not sure this new subreddit is really needed in the grand scheme of things in the first place, but down the road, if it seems necessary, I'd like to accept candidates to administer the group. Those who are already in the habit of collecting ground coverage seem like a good potential resource for that.
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I Don't Think it Works That Way
08/28/2023
A Monday Perp Turkey. This video circulating in social media shows a woman accused in a Ring app post of criminal activity, outsmarting technology.
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My Decision is Rated X
07/29/2023
Hi everyone, BuffScan is not abandoning social media or specifically Twitter (now called X) after all.
You can read about my as-tortureous reasoning for rolling back that plan as you can the reasoning I had for trying to do so in the first place.
Although I can no longer embed Twitter feeds at this website, which was extremely handy, it is still the leading and inexpensive microblogging instrument for spot media distribution.
I also recently secured the BuffScan username on Instagram because down the road I think the Insta/Threads combination will be a better choice, though, let's face it, it is quickly becoming apparent that being "everywhere" like most professional social media managers already understand, is going to be ultimately important.
Given this pivot, my information about how to follow this blog has been updated.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Getting Rid of Reach
07/10/2023
Following the implosion of Twitter in July 2023 I decided to activate a loosely devised strategy of eliminating "reach" as a driving component of BuffScan and all of my blogging projects.
Until then, Twitter had been viewed as the best social media platform to act as both a direct conduit to a critical mass audience and a bargain instant-publishing host that could effectively drop content onto the BuffScan blog through the service's ability to embed a timeline. The BuffScan Twitter feed was a superior mechanical compliment to a site like this without competing with it as the platform.
But with the shutting down of or the unexplained breaking down of Twitter's timeline embeds, I quit using Twitter for that purpose.
Fortunately, thanks to some personal engineering here on my personally-developed Battle Blog platform, and to the fediverse-oriented "Mastodon", I found ways to maintain "instant publishing" capabilities right from the firegrounds or crime scenes.
If there is a fire that I am in a position to report on, I have the means to put a picture of it up at this blog in seconds, right from my phone. Straight to the blog itself, or, if I prefer, straight to Mastodon thanks to its ability to allow timeline embeds -- the thing Twitter once did well but stopped. There's no loss of immediate publishing.
What can't be replaced however is reach. Which is to really say, I cannot rely on serendipitous exposure to thousands of people with each artifact of content that I produce. Exposure leads to discovery and content consumption, and in the best outcomes, leads to unsolicited shares and permanent subscribers.
For many bloggers and website producers reach has become the keystone objective and measure of their website's worth. Not achieving it, or not achieving it right away, has despirited many publishers into quitting the craft. Without an audience it is natural to ask what is the point.
But I am going to buck that line of thinking. First because of Twitter's demise, which proves you can't rely on social media in any form to become a defacto content machine for your production.
And second, because specifically not relying on "instant audiences" and "instant reach" as a blog producer, I am challenged to push more interesting content that make the publication stick on encounter.
Maybe a more eloquent way of putting it is that I want to fail because I am boring; too understaffed to produce meaningful content; perhaps talentless as a writer and editor, or quite more likely, all of the above.
I don't want to fail because I didn't copy/paste enough to a dozen social media channels, all while losing my publishing independence in the process.
My newfound strategy, after all, is what we did before social media. We relied on word of email (forwarding and listservs if you remember any of that), and most crucially, interlinking between individual producers. Your blog linked to my blog, and my blog linked to yours. And people sitting down at PCs with their cups of coffee and a desire to explore, clicked from one place to another, bookmarking whatever they thought fancied a future visit.
That's how a website or blog got its traction for "realzies" and I am blowing the dust off that old playbook to make it happen again.
Had it not been for Twitter's meltdown I'd have gone along with being buried by the reality that nobody "surfs the web" anymore. Nobody is interlinking between their web personas.
To get right down to it, nobody is linking at all. Hyperlinking has gradually morphed into a scary proposition that only hackers try to bait you with. Me sending someone a link to my latest blog entry via e-mail would only likely terrify a recipient into deleting the message straight away.
I think Death of Hyperlink, The Aftermath by Hossein Derakshsan spells out this reality well enough, and is a worthy read.
There's def going to have to be some unwinding of the past decade to make this work. But I'll take that chance. After what happened to Twitter, we know now that we can't rely on big tech to be the revolution in our little Information Age.
We the the real people with a thirst to communicate and explore have been that revolution the entire time. Twitter's crumble just snapped us -- well me -- back into the game.
I'll be following up with the new ways that you can follow this and my other blogs.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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Police Radio is Going Out Of Service
04/15/2023
If you are one of the people who circulate among the social media or internet circles that a site like this might come to your attention through, it's fair to guess that you have some relationship to a police scanner.
You're the classical police scanning hobbyist, such as myself; work in public safety, or maybe work with the media.
Whatever the case, you're the type of person that needs to hear and know the following: Police scanners are going away. Police scanning is evaporating.
I am unfurling a vision of something to replace it that is much more exciting, engaging, and useful. And to the extent that it involves radios and structured radio communication, will by its very nature, actually save a variation of public safety monitoring despite all the foils of encryption and policy derision against chaotic transparency. In the world that I write out here, there will be something to tune in to and even to participate in directly -- if that world actualizes.
I need an opening entry, and something as plain and blunt as this one is really the gist, the point, and the start of a beautiful story.
You can read about the mission of this blog here.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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