This photo is why I am coming to @minds. Two years ago I helped pioneer live Facebook videos on location. I invested in the equipment and tools necessary to take high end video gear on the street for the purpose of live news. This was a time before local news had caught on to be able to do this, or they just were figuring it out. Our numbers were through the roof. It was awesome. It felt like a gold rush, like we could really change the world. All we had to do was "go live" and we would have thousands of views within a few minutes. I loved every minute of it. But slowly those numbers would dip, even as our following continued to grow. It was unbelievable. Even today our followers are much higher than they were two years ago, but our live videos are lucky to crack 100 live viewers. That's impossible. It became impossible to create content for our viewers because we didn't know if they just didn't like our content and we needed to change things up, or if we were being suppressed somehow. We know now. It was Facebook. As time went on, nothing we could do could get a significant viewership. Our followers began to complain that even though they placed a priority on our live videos, they were not being notified. Facebook was just not letting people know we were live. The videos were not appearing in peoples timelines, or in their notifications. We were being censored. I can't tell you how depressing this was for a content creator. One minute you're on top the world. You figured something out that people really enjoyed, you were having 50k people watch your programming within an hour. It was exciting, raw, and uncut. The next minute it was as if you didn't exist. It was a high and low point. This is why I have so much hope for #minds. I know you can't broadcast live content yet, but I have to start laying down my cards somewhere else. Somewhere that promises me that my views will be based simply on the quality of content that I produce and nothing else. It ...