We have reached a time in our human existence where social media is a big part of our daily life both for professional and recreational reasons. For some its work, or about being informed about the latest news, while for others a way to reconnect with high school buddies and relatives, or flirt with a person of the opposite sex. There's a plethora of reasons why we log into FaceBook or Instagram every morning when we wake up or at night before we get some sleep to check our feed. It wasn't such a long time ago where our socialization was more interpersonal and less digital. We have come a long from the time of MySpace where myspace-Tom was our first friend when we created our accounts to our time of SnapChat (feels already old and outdated) and Tik Tok that took Gen Z by storm.
The legacy social media have such power in our lives that for many it is scary. But the need to stay connected and the idea that everyone can open an account for free and use them make them all to enticing to stop using. Yet, as the saying goes in internet; If you are not paying for something, then you are not the costumer but the product.
Data privacy
This thought leads us the the first point worth raising in regards to how social media make profit while offering us their services for free, and that is through ads. But what do advertisers need? A large audience and their data. That is what exactly the largest social media corporations are able to offer them and profit through ad revenue. Thus, are data is up for sale to the highest bidder while we think our privacy is protected. This is a common business practice with the largest platforms getting their largest revenue through the private sale of our data that is mined and collected every second we spend in social media, both wittingly and unwittingly. This makes us, the users or account holders, the largest cash-cow for the business model of the likes of FaceBook and other corporations. Therefore, their model depends on maintaining high engagement from their userbase inside the platform and a high number of both registered and active users as to make their platforms more enticing to advertisers. To be able to ensure privacy and ownership of our data users need to have a stake on the platforms they use and this can be done through decentralized social networks outside of the web of digital corporations.
User generated content ownership
Second, by spending time on social media we produce content, to which in most cases we don't have ownership of. I know what some will think, we may not have ownership but our user generated content can be shared around increasing our followership which can give some of us an influencer status which in turn translates in financial gains, small or big. Yet, most of us will never reach that status, which requires constant activity and engagement, luck, niche content and a lot of grinding. We have private lives and jobs and nearly not so much time to gamble into getting that large followership needed to ever get close to getting such status. Yet, we publish our thought through tweets on Twitter, share vacation and travel photos on Instagram, create some original short videos on Tik Tok or write and share articles and status updates on Facebook. All that is appreciated by some of your followers and friends, and if the content is quality and unique why aren't you able to monetize and profit something from it from those who appreciate it? This can be done, through decentralized social media platforms based on blockchain, where users are able to tip you directly for the content you produce. Heck, with NFTs gaining such stream, you should be able to tokenize such content and even sell it to your highest bidder. It's high time you own your social media products and get compensated in some form the amount of time and effort your put into your content.
Getting back to our roots
In the beginnings, the internet was more decentralized that it is now. Social media that are a prime component of Web 2.0 significantly altered that, making themselves all too powerful in the process. Now, they have an authority, larger than governments, to decide who should be on and who should be cancelled. This authority was not vested on them by their users through a general societal consensus, but by their corporative status and structures. Information is filtered and only that which agrees with the mainstream narratives is allowed to be shared. Users, even with hundreds of thousands of followers can be silenced, blocked, shadow banned, have their content deleted and all-together cancelled with the arbitrary decisions of these self appointed gate-keepers of truth. We need to get back to our roots, to the roots of internet where information was readily and easily available, where free speech in its digital form was sacred and where we decide what we want to follow and read. The only way to that, is to eliminate these gate-keepers through truly decentralized applications that make the user owner his own content, un-cancellable, and able to search and access information freely without him being spoon-fed it or risking being cancelled for not agreeing with though orthodoxy of our times.
