Hmmm… It may be nearing the time for me and WordPress to part company…
I do understand this is a free site so the need for putting up with small ads appearing at the bottom of posts is a necessary evil to be endured – after all there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But this new addition of entire sponsored WordPress posts appearing large as life between my own posts feels like a step too far for me to be able to continue comfortably.
The addition of these full-scale WordPress posts means it no longer even looks to me like ‘my’ blog any more. It’s WordPress basically giving the platform and its native ads equal importance and visual weight to my personal blog posts, blatently muscling in and taking over my chosen content rather than just adding a small post-script to my posts as before, potentially signalling the end of the road for this little blog.
I know ‘all’ I have to do is upgrade to a paid site to get rid to these native sponsored ads but to be honest I’m not prepared to pay for what is no more than a hobby, a pastime – I only blog for fun so it really doesn’t matter that much to me. Advertise if you must, but don’t crowd me out of my own blog space and effectively bully me into submission. I’m not a business, and the bulk of my followers aren’t businesses either.
I had a Facebook page I used regularly for eight years, but when the ads became too aggressive and intrusive and Facebook started to decide for me which ‘preferred posts’ were to be given prominence in my own newsfeed and which should be disregarded I simply removed myself from the platform altogether with nary a backward glance.
So here I am almost seven years into my relationship with WordPress wondering if the time has come to do the same thing here… Hmmm…