The Walled Gardens of Social Media: From the Free Web to the “Free” Web | Hacker Noon
Our synopsis:
This is one of the best article we have come across that details the perils of social media and the social media trends before and now.
This is a must read for those who are still locked in to the services of the big tech companies.
Then, smartphones came along. Software companies started to have access to users’ data. User data became a currency, so it made sense for software companies to make it as difficult as possible for users to migrate their data to other services. In short, this is the concept of vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in builds dependency: once you start using a vendor’s services, it becomes harder to move to a concurrent service. For example, if all your family are is on Facebook, you are locked into Facebook. If your family only uses WhatsApp, you are locked into WhatsApp. If your company uses Microsoft Office, you are locked into Microsoft Office.
Vendor lock-in - What a devious device! This concept of vendor lock-in gives the tech giants tremendous amount of power. A power which some of these tech giants think is more powerful than the power governments hold. Hence, you see the nonchalant attitude of these tech giants towards governments and their regulations. They behave as if they are the guardians of freedom and democracy of the people all over the world deriding the political process and the democratic will of the people.
The sad thing is the users of these platforms, both individuals and corporations, are either ignorant of the devious plots of the tech giants or choose to ignore the obvious. They prefer little conveniences or profit over freedom.
The result is that we moved from the decentralized Web to the centralized Web, where applications own, control, switch off, surveil or censor their ecosystem.
Would we see a similar trend taking place in the current DLT platforms in the future?
Occasionally, application or cloud startup services offer their service for free. They try to sign up as many users as possible, hoping for a charge or a subscription later. Be wary when using such a service. Leading companies (Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.) can buy services you are using and shut them down with few chances of recovering your data. If startups go out of business, they can sell their user database to return money to their investors.
There has been numerous examples of such sales of start-ups to leading companies. When these start-ups offer services free that are irresistibly attractive, the consumer sign-ups grows exponentially. That makes the start-up a choice purchase not only for its data but also a means to kill off a potential business rival. Hence the enormous price paid to acquire the start-ups. There is little consumers can do unless governments step in with regulations.
Why is that? Whenever we find out a new piece of information, we tend to judge it. If it is consistent with our world model, we are inclined to accept it. If it is inconsistent, then we are tempted to refuse it. The algorithm plays this routine repeatedly, learning about our preferences and keeping us engaged for longer and longer in a walled garden where the stress and unpleasantness of different opinions and mental models are almost non-existent.
This is something all social media users should be mindful of to guard against being abused. Being used by social media firms is okay. The consumers use them and they use consumers. There is a mutual exchange of fair consideration from both sides. But the problem is when the social media firms abuse the consumer data. There is a fine line here which the regulations should address.
A shift is coming. The inventor of the “free as in free beer” and decentralized web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is currently involved with a new project that aims to change the way applications work today, The Solid Project. Suppose a user keeps their digital data in decentralized servers, called Pods. No organization can longer control their data, but they need to ask for the user permission to access relevant data in a Pod. Another project is Elastos, a blockchain-powered Internet in which users have complete control over their digital assets.
That is interesting. Both the Solid project and Elastos have received little publicity.
One reason for Elastos receiving little publicity is that Binance has not listed it on its platform. That does not in anyway take away Elastos' inherent utility. Just that it remains a hidden gem to be discovered.
