DailyPost 789
SOCIAL MEDIA BUSINESS MODEL
Facebook is the prima donna of the social media, undeniably, there are lots in the fray. Nobody knows with what vision it started and were the founders were able to fathom out the booty that lay ahead. As it moved further the untrodden path started getting clearer and so did the business model. The economic power of data was becoming more and more visible and whole of the social media economy was to develop around that. The business model is to monetise amassed user data in the most innovative manner it can, legality, propriety and social conscience was totally alien to their business.
Creation / secretion of dopamine / consequent addiction, the user being transformed into a product to extract, using omnibus consents to misuse data, faking third party useful data derivatives and a totally govt. regulation less global business enterprise. This is the business model. A media company being accepted as an IT company. This is their model of making the world blindfolded of all reasoning and they continue on a money spinning free. Leave the regulatory mechanism, the fraud being played openly does not invoke any criminal law provisions across the globe. Paying some petty fines here and there for some data protection issues is an integral part of their business model, it presumably legalises all the blatantly illegal acts.
Privacy, data protection, third party usage of data, the software vulnerabilities and the like, the world is waiting with bated breath for a new social media regime to be ushered in. This would need to break the most successful money spinning model of our times. Data being fed for free, mindlessly and endlessly by the data entry operators of social media ( users), 2.2 billion already on the rolls and increasing. It is the biggest nation on earth. This is the real demographic dividend not even imagined by Malthus.
Unshackling data is not the issue, unshackling ourselves is a bigger question. It’s like the moneylenders of the Hindi movies, one loan and you are finished for good, for generations. Today the techies themselves have started sending to schools with not technology. Let cognition grow in a natural way. It’s time people have to decide for themselves, social media giants can’t.
UNREGULATED SOCIAL MEDIA IS ANTI- SOCIAL.
Sanjay Sahay