The Social Dilemma

Let’s Talk About Keeping Your Information Safe And Owning Your Experience!

“The Social Dilemma”

In the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma”, it addresses many issues built into social media and how they prey on their users. Here are a few things companies do:

Data Harvesting - Companies collect and sell every piece of information possible. Your name, email, birthday, politics, likes, dislikes, groups, search history, screen time, habits, your posts, and many, many other forms of data.

Centralized Control - Since the entire purpose of these companies is to harvest your data, they need a place to store it all. This includes even more harmful information; from credit cards and debit cards, bank accounts, drivers licenses, social security numbers, and other crucial information that holds your identity. And it’s all stored in one place... Their central servers.

The “Infinite Scroll” - It’s no secret that these social media companies track everything you do, including trying to estimate your eye-movement on screen. But they have also created algorithms designed to tailor the content in the order they want you to see. And what do they want you to see first? Something that makes you mad.

Every time you pull up Facebook, how long does it take for you to see an article or conversation you disagree with? They want to find your boogeyman.

Creators are still combating censorship.

The real question, though, is why are some people censored while others aren't?

Because the main goal of centralized social media companies is to profit, please shareholders, please investors, and keep customers happy.

And since your time, focus, and energy is monetized... YOU are the product, not the customer.

Then who is the REAL customer?

Advertisers - They are the real customers because they pay social media platforms to mine YOUR attention. And when a creator shares content that goes against the mainstream narrative... It's bad for LinkedIn's, Twitter's, Pinterest's, YouTube's, and Meta's business.

For example:

If there's a large advertiser that spends millions a year on social media ads... And they say, "You know what, Meta, we don't want to be associated with this kind of creator. You need to stop them from posting these types of things, or we will take our advertising money elsewhere".

Facebook either deletes their posts, "shadow bans" them, suspends their account, or removes them from the platform altogether. This could be through algorithms, the biased decisions of employees, or both. And Meta justifies this by claiming the users' posts have violated their terms of service.

And if the ban becomes controversial because some of these individuals have large followings, it connects this verdict to some political agenda item.

But we aren't fooled.

The true motivation behind social media bans is that they can safeguard their ad revenue.

As Meta's founder told policymakers in 2018...

The only way Meta keeps its platforms free is by raking in billions of dollars from online marketing, which is how many companies drum up a large piece of their annual revenue.

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