In essence Google, Facebook and Twitter are the new gatekeepers with regard to what you can publish in the 'journalist' area, while Amazon is the gatekeeper for what you can publish if you want to go the way of a long form novel in essence, and if you can't get your novel on their platform you essentially can't make a living if being a novelist is what you want to do.
Then finally there is the whole money transfer business of paypal which can say they won't pay you if they don't approve of your business not to mention patreon which purports to be the place where a person can go to raise money if they can promote themselves...
Anyway, given my paranoia issues, I don't use anything except blogger (which is a Google company) which won't monetize my account because I marked it as having 'adult' content.
The thing is that for about three hours I've been sitting here listening to Tom Pool and getting an even wider education about the whole issue of these platforms being able to remove people from their platform which probably isn't helping my paranoia issue.
Now where was I going? Oh yeah... short thought, how to get past the gatekeepers and an appreciation of Laz for providing the platform here that he has only limited to the extent that he is limited by the law of the nation where he has his server.
Mind that Canada worries me to a great deal. I make no bones about the fact that I'm bisexual, that I've had a relationship with one person of each sex and that they both failed spectacularly, and that both partners blamed me so I assume I'm too broken to try again.
Well shit there I went oversharing... Just trying to establish my bonefides given that I have used language that is very inflammatory in my writing. And I worry about eventually having to pull some of my stories or further limit what I will write...
Most people have an idea what issues have been talked to death here that Canada has already stepped in on WRT items publish on this site. Given their current direction of movement I do worry.