Photo by Tracy Le Blanc from Pexels

Where did it all go wrong?

It seems we have slept walked into a society, where we have been conditioned not to care about our privacy or the rights to own our personal data. Our friends join social networks and we fear we are missing out on something and join blindly, signing off our personal information without reading terms of service or what those companies are allowed to do with this information they collect on us.

When social media sites started, they were an innovation, using modern technology to bring us closer to people we cared about and people we don't really care about. They are great for networking, keeping in touch with new and old colleagues, find out about job opportunities, the latest local news from your home town, next door neighbour or getting back in contact with long lost friends.

When we signed up to these sites, we couldn't quite understand how a business could make money giving away their service for free. The old method of selling advertising space seemed to be the avenue we all thought their revenue stream would come. But 5 years into having our accounts we didn't see advertising and have only just really started to see more and more adverts across all the platforms.

If a product is free, YOU are the product

Now these platforms have been operating for 10 years or so, do we really want to move, create new accounts start the process all over again? Is it really worth it? Is it that bad that these companies can use our information how they want? Do we even care?

To keep up to date with all the information posted on these media sites, we are all spending more and more time on these platforms, generating content, building the companies from the ground up. Volunteering our time and effort for free and we get repaid with targeted advertising, spam e-mail and being pigeon holed into specific categories. Our data is being sold off and used in ways we never knew about, wanted or consented to.

What are the alternatives?

New platforms are now starting up using block-chain technology to incentivise users to produce quality content with tokens. These can then be exchange for currency. Steemit is an example of this, leading the way into a new era of our relationship with blogging content. Upcoming technology in development like APPICS, a new social media platform, where you can generate income from posting your content or liking content from others. See the official youtube here to learn more.

These technologies are built on the premise that you should own your information and content produced. You should be rewarded for making the Internet the place it is, not a 3rd party company.

Now that we understand the current paradigm of social media networks, are we going to do anything about it? It will be a question of time and your personal outlook of how they operate. But your time is one commodity you can control, you can use how you wish. We can use our time to help ourselves and help others, but when companies are using our time to profit themselves , you have to ask - How much value does it give to you. Is it worth your time and effort?