“The awful truth is that we (the people) are the product that SM sells. That's how they make money using the data we give them - i.e. what we look at, what we click, what we read, what we like and don’t like, where we live, who are our friends, how old we are, what music do we like, etc. The list is unending.” (ref: Global Knowledge Websites).
SM go about the business openly with easy to remember names: Meta (who own; Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and god knows what else ). X (X= ex-Twitter). Reddit. TikTok. SnapChat. Pinterest and that one stand alone SM for appointed professionals, LinkedIn - founded by the venture capitalist, Reid Hoffman, and his crew. Now owned by Microsoft who bought the platform in 2016 for 26 Billion USD. And so the list of SM’s grows quickly as the massive corporate companies realise that all SM Data means ‘a-lot money honey’ As Warhol said to one of helpers, before his death. We the Punters on SM allow ourselves to be sucked in to the morass of the crowded spaces that are SM honey traps, as they dangle their No Cost registration, often we have have more than one Social Media account linked up together.
There are bloggers who post advice on how to get more friends and ‘to post regularly’
to gather more followers - these bandits are no doubt employed by the SM data gathers
or need the clicks to get sponsors money. So our likes, dislikes and latest selfies
etc can be cross posted and all our ‘followers’ can see what great humans and how
talented we are, Click = self gratification and confirmation that one exists… “We
Are Never Alone -
if we are on Social Media”.
There will be a whole army of people out there who will be up in arms that someone
even questions the validity and usefulness of SM -
and I can hear the ‘But’s’ emanating from my laptop already, even now as I am writing
this snappy little critic. And I am sure those who metaphorically ‘live’ on SM truly
believe - that it's a free service, one that they are getting from those kind hearted
conglomerate masters in Silicon Valley and beyond.
So, accepting that the SM companies will not be going anywhere soon, and people (or the punters, if you agree with my critic) will continue to feed the Data Monsters with info about themselves, my next point is what can we do to get something back for what we give them? Many will say - it’s a cheap way of keeping in touch with friends and family. Really, like we all ha
