Blogging and competitions

After a long break, I've started to send out work to competitions and for consideration for publication. I have come across some restrictions on what I can send out that I haven't encountered before, and I find it somewhat perplexing.

Some editors now consider work posted to blogs etc as self-published and therefore ineligible for their prize or their magazine. Others go further and consider work posted to social media as being "published". I can understand why editors will want to limit their input to material that has not been published elsewhere, avoiding the "I can get it free somewhere else so why bother buying". This also limits the possibility - perhaps - of plagiarism and the messy business of trying to put it right.

However, the restrictions on material published online in forums/ social media is proving difficult for people who want to workshop material, especially those facing barriers to joining the traditional ways of work shopping new material. For those of us without a suitable editor/ critical friend, or the chance to join a writers group, how do we access a suitable critique? If there aren't any writers groups meeting locally, or if our work pattern or caring responsibilities means we can't go, what then?

Writers don't work alone - we are a part of a community. How do you manage to get feedback from your friends without self publishing on shared sites?
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Picture sourced from Pixabay