Our https://tromnews.com/illustrations/ does not work because, well, Instagram...you see most people use Instagram and that's where we can find these "artists" making interesting illustrations. Now to pull that content from Instagram you have to "hack" it. And so we use Bibliogram, which is a front-end for Instagram that also allows you to see people's profiles without having to have an Instagram account (the sane way). Plus, it provides an RSS feed for accounts.

Anyway, Instagram is blocking such front-ends so these days it seems all Bibliogram instances are not working, or not working properly.

So you know...

People should use Pixelfed instead. Federated, trade-free. However most of them won't, for two main reasons that are entangled with each-other:

1. Fame
2. Money

In other words, in this trade based society one can and will convert views and followers into products, currency, access. Trade those. And so human immediately associate quantity (of likes, shares, followers, comments, etc) with "value", simply because the more of those, the better and more trades you can do with them. And so the concept of fame is reinforced and maximized.

Even those who may not use their "reach" to trade for something, they (because of the trade value of those) still see the quantity as "value". And so, even the ones bashing facebook, youtube, instagram and the like, do so on those platforms. The irony cannot be greater.

At least TROM walks that talk, and we have gave up on those ad-platforms. Now we use our own that connect with tens of millions of humans from all around the world. Pixelfed, Friendica, Mastodon, Peertube, and so many other platforms, are amazing alternatives to those ad-platforms like youtube, facebook, twitter, instagram and the like.

Anyway, it happened before that insta-ad has blocked Bibliogram, but then Bibliogram hacked it again. So our Illustrations stream may work again these days. We shall see....

#tromlive #TradeRuinsEverything