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I will miss our LP Facebook members during the pause and appreciate the admins decision here. I have been reading the Facebook group less recently, partly because I have other irons in the fire, but also wanting to avoid any spoilers about “The Grey Wolf”, even if inadvertently posted. I hope other members of the Louise Penny Facebook group will find this opportunity. Thank you, admins, for all you do.
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Thank you for your thoughtful comments, dear Jane. We sincerely appreciate you.
We had found a large number of comments containing major spoilers in the posts. Many of the posts were quite innocent and had no details at all, so it was very surprising to read these comments. And, as every day passed, there were more and more comments. We know with certainty that everyone who had not read the book would have been very disappointed and upset to have read these comments.
We created the group with a clear understanding of our responsibilities to the community. Some of us admins have been working in social media for decades and have managed groups with members in the millions. Our LP FB group is the smallest that we have managed. And yet, our LP group is by far the most stressful and we have spent significantly more time and energy managing our group than we have for any of the other groups. Even for all of the other groups combined. In the past days alone, we’ve been monitoring threads and reading comments almost every few minutes of the day, from the moment we woke up in the morning until the last seconds before sleep, because we really wanted to ensure that our group members could fully enjoy The Grey Wolf. And we realized that this was not sustainable. Ultimately, although there are so many members in our group who we admins truly value and care for, and we know that our community brings joy not only to the familiar names who we consider our friends there, but many others, like 100 year old Betty, who only visit to read posts and comments, we feel that in reality, we’ve been working full-time, including nights, weekends and holidays, for FB. Volunteering to work at FB, actually.
And we do have responsibilities to our friends, families and communities outside of FB, as well. And responsibilities to ourselves as individuals trying to balance how much we give to others and how much we need to keep for ourselves to enable us to continue to give to others. So finding balance to deal with some of the major traumas and life events that we have been experiencing this past year is a goal.
Thank you again, Jane. Your kindness so very much appreciated.
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Thank you for the hard work that goes into something you don’t even get paid for.
But I SO miss the FB page. I find this very hard to navigate.
Thanks again. Kandice-
Hi Kandice, nice to see you here! Sorry you’re missing our FB group and our lovely friends. We completely understand how you feel. We also understand about trying to navigate our site here; there is always room for improvement. We’ll do our best to make things easier and better for everyone.
By the way, congratulations on getting your art featured in LP’s end of year video last week! Hope you saw the comments she made after viewing all the pieces in our Three Pines Art Gallery. She and her team were very impressed.
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Cool! How did I miss all of this? I went back to the January Newsletter and found it!
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When Marion came up with idea, she hoped that LP would come to visit and view the artwork, so we’re very pleased that Marion’s wish was fulfilled. We did share the news here in mid-December as soon as we learned that Louise had visited the Three Pines Art Gallery. Our friends here on BCF will always be the first to know everything! But perhaps our post got buried in the home page feed over the holidays.
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Not buried; I just had almost no time to read anything until after January 2nd! I so enjoyed our daughters’ visits but I am not match for three small children!
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So pleased to know that you had lovely visits with your daughters and the little ones, Jane!
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Yes! I was excited to see 2 of my artworks in the video!
Do we have any idea when we will be back on Facebook?
The ads here are so frustrating. I know you can’t do anything about that.
Oh well, I just need to keep making art.
🥰 Kandice -
Sorry, what ads do you mean? We have not put any ads on this site, although we should do. Anything you see here are links to other parts of this site, we’re not earning any money from ads on BCF!
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Right now as I read this post, an ad popped up at the bottom of the page.
Oh, dear I can’t post a screen shot. Anyway they are from Temu, Google, etc. -
Thanks for letting us know, Kandice. We’ve never seen an ad on BCF before, so that’s quite surprising, though we are using Google to track the number of visitors to BCF to enable us to assess interest. That said, thanks for bringing up the issue of ads – we admins have been meaning to explore and discuss the issue amongst ourselves, but have been busy with other tasks. We really should implement ads here to make the site self-sustainable financially, but if we do move forward with display ads here, we will control where they are placed to ensure that they’re not a source of frustration for our friends.
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For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen any ads when I’ve visited this site. I access it on my laptop, but don’t know if that would make a difference or not.
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Same here. I wonder if it depends on which browser one is using. I am fine with curated ads if they improve the financial sustainability of this page. I have come to count on BCFs.
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We will give it a go, although BCF is very, very small at the moment, so ads will likely earn less than a dollar a day. Hardly worth any nuisance to our friends here, which is why we haven’t bothered with any ads at all. But still, we do need to move forward in this direction; not from a profit/greed point of view, but from the perspective of sustainability and community improvement.
If you are counting on us Jane, we won’t let you down. We are very sincere in our gratitude for true friends.
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Sounds like a good plan. It’s good to know the ads will be there because you chose to put them there.
If I can help with sustainability in any way let me know. I am glad to donate to such a positive and enjoyable group. -
You are too kind Libby! Thank you. Yes, you can contribute in the same way you always have: you be you and share some of you with us. What a gift! And we are so grateful.
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Yes, please let us know if there is a tangible way to contribute.
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Thank you Jane. We could never ask anyone to go out of their way for us, which is why we deeply appreciate your efforts to invite our friends to join us here months ago. We’re going to give this a little think and perhaps we will share some passive ways to support our community.
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De nada! It has always been clear that administering this Facebook group represents a huge commitment and we are all the beneficiaries of your work.
I am looking forward to being up to speed for the official discussion of “The Grey Wolf>
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I appreciate this thread. Thank you Jane for initiating, and thank you admins for the response.
I know that FB is a billion dollar business and that businesses are there to promote their products or services to all of us regular people who just want to keep in touch with family and friends. And beyond our real life circles, have found new friends and communities like our LP FB group to enjoy. And of course I understand that FB and Mark Z benefit the most out of all of us.
So, it’s interesting to find community-minded individuals who volunteer without any interest in profiting from their social media following.
Obviously, with all of the other fake LP groups that have been created in the past year or so, the opportunity to monetize from LP fans is ripe. And the fact that in our LP group, t-shirt sales and the like have been banned, shows a level of integrity that is proof enough of the type of leadership behind our group. Add to this the ways in which admins have led us out of conflict in the past months, and I feel more and more like our FB group is a unicorn.
I was a member of a FB group run by Simon & Schuster. It was a large group, I think slightly larger than ours, but they had a team of 10-12 admins helping to manage the group. It was a nice group, but I am no longer a member only because the group closed this past summer. This, from a business point of view, is unheard of. All businesses now require social media presences on multiple platforms, and the fact that they had a large, thriving following and decided that it wasn’t worth their time speaks volumes. Being an admin and managing large groups is certainly very difficult.
I can see that if our FB group isn’t being used to promote products or services, then it is really the generosity of admins to continue to put the time and energy required to maintain a large group that has had so much conflict this year. And I can see that on this book club friends site, there are no big, invasive ads. Or small ads that riddle every other post or blank space. So the generosity continues here.
It seems like our community is being given the opportunity to continue to connect with one another on this platform rather than on FB, but I can see that many don’t see this space as convenient or familiar enough. I wonder if any of those who want to continue to connect with the community but don’t want inconvenience really appreciate the commitment and inconvenience of managing the group. I do hope that our special community can continue to connect. I appreciate the many members of the group who consistently participate to offer posts and comments and enrich the lives of all of us who are a little quieter.
And I appreciate our admins who have clearly sacrificed a lot for us. I hope our group comes together again, but I can understand if that might not be possible.
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I want to thank admin Jane Richmond for her patience in helping me to navigate my way to this site, and for not making me feel like a twit while doing so! I also deeply appreciate her answering all my questions regarding “the pause”. I understand much better now, and am very grateful for all the energy and time the admins have put into maintaining our wonderful Louise Penny group for so long. I am hoping that many others will find their way here to this new place.
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I am happy to discover this link! I am still learning to navigate this site too, Jo-Anne. Thank you, Jane, for starting this conversation. I think there are probably many from our group who are wondering. I echo the sentiments above and sincerely hope others will join us too. It is already so nice to see familiar names here.
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Good morning! I found my way here. So glad to see you all. I understand the reasons for the pause, and sure hope they choose to resume. Yes – I had chosen to be careful what I browsed in the group to avoid Grey Wolf spoilers, but ultimately I figured if I got “spoiled” that was my responsibility. The spoiler-anger in the group has been a bit discomfiting.
On a happy note, I did finish listening to The Grey Wolf this morning, and am excited to exchange opinions and insights. And….I’m definitely beginning an immediate re-read! -
Well, my friends, reading the names and comments on this site has been heartwarming because we know that it’s an effort to be here, to learn a new way to chat and to have to fight with new tech that doesn’t always work smoothly on a first try. This gives us incentive to continue to serve our community because we feel strongly in reciprocating kindness that has been extended to us. But we’ve also seen comments and received messages on FB that give us the opposite incentive, that let us know that our efforts on FB are not worthwhile.
The spoiler anger Amy mentions is what we were trying to avoid because this has been a particularly challenging year with conflicts in the group. We’ve had many sleepless nights because of group issues and the stress from the conflicts is something we don’t want to experience anymore. We paused the group not only due to the spoiler issues with the wolf, but also because the stress has taken a toll.
When we created this companion site, the intention was simply for this space to host information as a resource for our group. But as the conflicts surfaced, we realized that it is the design of the FB feed that has caused the problems. The first problem is that the algos prevent everyone from seeing everything posted, which means that admin announcements are ineffective. With one main feed that FB algos control, content is filtered and hidden, and it is impossible to distribute the same information to everyone. This is intentional because FB earns income from people having to “boost” their posts to enable higher visibility. Despite FB users joining groups, they will never see all of the posts unless they make an effort to visit the group every day and scroll through chronologically. But we know that the vast majority of our members do not make this effort.
A second issue is that because there is only one feed, people inadvertently see content they may not want to see. Yes, we continually ask members to scroll past, which everyone does without complaint when it is a FB ad in their feeds. But somehow, the tolerance is lower for content that is posted by fellow members; content that is not posted to try to sell members anything, and that is typically more relevant than the random FB ads in their feeds. We could probably have a good discussion on people’s anger and desire to control situations within reach vs the acceptance of similar situations that they feel they cannot influence. But we can save that chat for another time.
This leads to the third issue, which is the learned behaviour on social media to be less polite and more intolerant. Add to that the design of the feed and ease of commenting and posting, and there is a propensity to be highly reactive and less thoughtful, with what seems like a need for instant gratification for impact and reach.
So now we believe that this companion site could possibly serve a second purpose: to enable our community to connect in a more harmonious way. With the option to segregate content into forums, members cannot complain about seeing spoilers from a book they haven’t read, because they have chosen to visit those particular forums. While we completely agree with and appreciate Amy’s point of view of taking responsibility for one’s actions, as well as her demonstrated kindness while interacting in our group, we have seen and felt it frequently enough to know that not everyone in our FB group shares this perspective.
We are well aware that this companion site is no FB. We put this site together ourselves with our limited knowledge and budget. We’ve added affiliate links to the books so that we could try to make this site self-sustainable. So far, we’ve earned about $30 CAD, so it is nowhere close to being self-sustaining. However, we will continue to finance this site as long as there is enough demand for its use. Clearly, billions were not spent to develop this site and billions will not be earned here. And so we understand how you feel. FB is like a luxury penthouse in a sky-high tower where you can view and experience the world from your window. And this is our makeshift shack in the woods, with rickety chairs and only the conversations amongst ourselves to entertain us. But, we have seeds and can plant new trees to build shack 2.0, if there is interest.
It’s a little shocking that you all made it here in the first place, to be honest! But goodness, we’re so pleased to see you here, at least giving it a go. We know that many of our other friends with familiar names have also registered here, but haven’t yet voiced their thoughts in this space. Though they did make the effort to join. And it’s heartwarming that you all made the effort to show up and join the conversation that dear Jane started.
Ultimately, this is all about community and what members of our group want. We admins are also members of our community and we hope that our position can be taken into consideration as well. We are not going to continually pull out a laundry list of things we do or moan about how much time is required to manage the group on FB. But if we did, we think you would be surprised and perhaps you’d understand our point of view a little better. Our priority has always been to provide a safe space for our friends to meet and enjoy some good chats together. And now, we can still fulfill that responsibility by providing this companion site as an alternative space for you all to meet, with the advantage to us that it might be easier and less time-consuming for us to manage. It’s possible that this site could solve some of the problems that have caused us all grief and discomfit in our FB group. And perhaps, we could all benefit.
But this space is only an option and if members of our community are unhappy with what we’re offering as a possible solution, then this isn’t going to happen. And that’s fine. Not FINE!! It’s ok. We’re not here to force anything on anyone; that will never work.
With respect to FB and the pause, for now, we will just say that we don’t want to close the group. But we fully understand why Simon & Schuster closed their group. At the moment, we admins all have off-FB responsibilities and some major life events that require our time and energy, so we need to take a moment to find a little more balance in our lives. Thank you all for showing up, in all the many ways that that phrase has meaning.
We welcome your thoughts, as always.
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Thank you. It will take me some time to adjust, but I am sure that I will eventually. Yesterday, I learned how to post here and today, I figured how to reply. LOL
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Thank you, Jane, and Book Club Friends for the continuation of our group. I understand the FB pause, however, I do miss the ease of the FB group. I am looking forward to reconnecting with my friends in this venue, because I do think of you as friends!! I finished The Grey Wolf last night and will reread it before the end of November discussion. Thank you , all, for all of your effort in keeping this group going!! It is much appreciated.
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While I miss the FB feed I understand completely how stressful it must have been to make this decision. It is quite obvious to me how much you care about the members and want to make sure everyone’s experience is a positive one. I can only begin to imagine the hours you put into keeping this site as special as it is. Thank you for all you do. You are a ray of sunshine in a stormy time right now.
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I have been an admin for a couple of groups, although much smaller groups. I understand and appreciate our admin’s efforts immensely. It is a demanding, often thankless and highly criticized role. Many of the legitimate groups run by individuals often make their groups private and hide them from the masses of bots and scammers and strange profiles making friendship requests. The larger groups are usually run by organizations for marketing and sales, typically.
I think there were often calls for our group to turn private and hide as well, but if I remember correctly, wasn’t there an admin post saying that it had been considered but ultimately rejected? I think it was because it was more in the spirit of Three Pines to be welcoming, not closed up and hiding from new LP readers. There may have been some other reasons as well, but I can’t recall at the moment. But I do think that keeping the group hidden and small would have been much easier to manage, though I am appreciative that they decided against hiding. And I do think that how the admins have managed the group is wonderful. Welcoming, despite the heavier work load. Thank you admins for providing such a uniquely safe space. And for allowing so many wonderful people to join, like all those in this forum, and so many more.
I will also add that I do not admin any groups anymore, so I do understand the reasons for the pause. I think FB also knows about the constant conflicts in groups as it is one of the issues that FB points to when groups decide to close. They offer articles and advice on how to deal with the various stressors so I think there is a common behaviour across all groups that leads to conflicts. I wouldn’t doubt that it is the nature of the platform and the groups that can be formed on FB that seems to always lead to conflicts.
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I read an observation on the home page just now, about the difference between FB and this compartmentalized site. And now I’ll add my own observations here, because I think this is where the main conversation is happening.
Most of us, although not all, agree with Louise’s politics and appreciate her work with Hilary. We know what Gamache stands for and we all admire him. I believe most of us were shocked and disappointed last week with the results of the election. Some of us are still deeply grieving.
What surprises me is how much we all choose to support those who have supported the opposite of what we believe is right. What is right for ourselves, our fellow humans, our countries, our planet.
We know who funded who, and which companies are owned by those individuals. We know about Cambridge Analytica and FB’s psychological experiments. We know about manipulation at WaPo. We know about disinformation through traditional and social media. We know it is billionaires behind what happened.
Yet, we choose to use their products. And we choose to do it as consumers. It’s understandable that businesses must use the services as part of their marketing strategies to reach us. LP absolutely must have a FB and Insta presence to sell books. But businesses are only forced to use these platforms because consumers are there. But we, as consumers, aren’t trying to sell anything to anyone, we don’t need to use these platforms to earn a living. We are the ones being sold to. And we choose to be sold to by the very people who are working against what we, as intelligent, educated, freedom-appreciating, mostly female, individuals, believe in. We choose to spend our time on their platforms or buying their products or using their services. So we are making them richer and more powerful despite grieving their ultimate goals with the profits we’re enabling.
Why?
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Lily Wright, thank you for a thought provoking post. “Why?” is a good question. I am uncertain if this really answers your question but it reflects my thinking, at least for now. I use social media platforms for many reasons. On Facebook, I find posts from actual friends and family that provide updates on their activities, accomplishments and lives. I use our neighborhood Facebook group to share activities of interest to my neighbors. I find like minded groups and interesting posts like Louise Penny readers. Could I do this in other ways? Sure, but Facebook is a pretty user friendly platform and it has a reach I am unlikely to have otherwise. On the plus side, it also provides easy access to news platforms I respect, like PBS and NPR.
I am in the process of leaving “X”, previously known as Twitter, and not solely because of the election results or its owner. X has new rules of service that begin on 11/15/2024 and allow the platform to use my activity to train AI models. That is a bridge too far. I confess, I have also found that all of the people whose writing and work I respect can be found on another platform which is equally or even more easy to use and much more respectful.
I have family and friends who have zero social media presence; none, zip, nada! I am uncertain I will get there. Social media are addicting in a certain sense and, once started, challenging to consider leaving.
I am grateful to Book Club Friends for this option to connect with readers of Louise Penny and other authors. I hope that over time, more people will be willing to navigate the move and learn a new site.
Thanks again!
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It is extremely difficult to leave social media and change habits. I saw a post from Laurie R. King announcing her (Mary Russell) departure from Twitter today. So I applaud you, Jane, and others who are making similar choices and hope to see more.
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I would like to add another voice to this thoughtful discussion. My name is not one any of you will recognize because I do not have an account on Facebook. I had one, decades ago, but I was asked to upload my passport info or other government issued ID to continue access. I declined, so I lost my Facebook account and have never bothered to register another. I do visit Facebook though, and have been a “member” of our group since the start, using a family member’s account to read posts and comments.
For me, it’s incredibly interesting to watch online interactions and behaviours. And also to read that X’s use of AI will be the breaking point for Jane. I would guess with some certainty that Jane is not alone in this reaction. It’s also interesting to think about what that line might be for others.
In the past 24 hours alone, I saw two posts from other Louise Penny groups (even though I/the family member’s account is not a member of those groups, the posts show up in the main feed, encouraging me to join, share and engage), that were originally written and shared in our group by Susan Howard. The posts had been stolen, copied word for word, with the accompanying images that Susan had chosen to publish with her thoughts. The posts had thousands of likes and shares, and hundreds of comments. They were also authored by fake profiles, who, if you reviewed their profiles in the groups, had shared a large amount of content, sometimes the same posts repeatedly.
Not only is this theft of Susan’s IP, there is another sad aspect of this, which is that the comments, likes and shares were from authentic Louise Penny fans. And when I browsed those fake groups, I saw some of the familiar names from our group making new posts, sharing thoughts and parts of their lives in these groups run by fake profiles. I will bet all I have in this world that not one of these fake profiles has ever read a word Louise has written. They may not be AI, but they are just as unreal and the systematic way that they copy real behaviours/content from Susan and everyone else they can access, is eerily similar.
I know that bots and scammers and fake profiles have increased in numbers on social media. The companies don’t mind because it makes their platforms look more successful than they really are. And the bots do help with engagement, fooling authentic people into spending more time on the platforms. I’ve seen the reports of farms in India where walls of mobile phones are stacked like books in a library, linked together to enable mass responses on a single command. And I remember the comment from admins when the word “hacked” had been used in a post and they said that there was a sudden response from bots trying to infiltrate the group.
If you search for Louise Penny or Three Pines on Facebook, you will see what admins have been warning about regarding fake groups and profiles. There are even fake profiles and pages claiming to be Louise herself. And I remember an admin announcement warning members not to friend a profile who was pretending to be Louise and had been systematically sending friend requests to our group members. I know that that one profile acquired hundreds of friends from that one effort alone. In addition, I’ve seen other authors I follow make similar announcements warning of impersonators. Is it AI or are there just a large number of scammers with nothing to do but try to fool real people?
When it comes to this Book Club Friends site, I am hopeful, but I fear that it is extremely difficult for people to change habits, to learn new things, to forgive frustrations when things aren’t as easy or as perfect as they’ve been accustomed to, or to even think to attempt anything that requires effort.
As the admins have alluded, the activity and visits to this site will dictate what happens. I just wonder how much time the admins will take to assess whether there is enough interest from members.
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Finally figuring my way around the site here. Thanks for explaining what’s been going on. I am a social media Luddite and normally don’t do much with it, but the book club was something I embraced and enjoyed so much. I am sorry for all the hard work and hassles you have had to endure on our behalf. I appreciate your efforts here to establish a safer, kinder haven than what I’ve been seeing out there lately. I am looking forward to hearing from “old friends” again as well as from new who will no doubt have thoughtful insights into The Grey Wolf and other things going on in life. Wishing you the best of success in this venture.
Just to show how ignorant I really am— is this totally separate from FB now? And am I to access this solely from the website address when I want to check in?-
Yes, this site is separate from FB, just meaning that you need to come here to this website address to log in and chat. I hope this is what you’re asking and this explains it clearly?
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Yes, Naomi, and thanks SO much for that explanation! That’s exactly what I needed to know. I was confused….
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Wonderful! So happy to help!
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