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Arshya Aggarwal
It manifests itself in the cutting-edge change in consumer behaviour, but it can also easily be categorised as spammy. It seeks our attention in ways we’re far from controlling. It governs us, parents us, influences us. Despite all those apparent concerns, we can’t seem to get enough of it — a point emotionally and practically supported by its biggest victims, us.
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It’s not news that something (read: a lot) is wrong with social media. You, your closest companions, your spouse, your children or that someone you know, has probably experienced it.
That unease you feel while scrolling through your Instagram feed - anxious, twitchy, demotivated, competitive, a little world weary - that’s what I’m referring to. Was it this month’s Facebook privacy scandal or that gut-wrenching TikTok video that ruined your morning? The reminder that you’ve entrusted the most intimate parts of your life to the biggest profit-maximising surveillance machine on the planet, is everywhere.
This growing discomfort is well quantified too. A recently conducted study confirmed that Facebook, Twitter and Google (parented by YouTube) are considerably less popular with
citizens across the globe than they were a few months ago.
Be that as it may, I, Arshya Aggarwal, am confident that it would be terribly ignorant to throw up our hands and assume that this is how it was supposed to be. Social media used to be a dream centred in a clear mission — enabling discussions, encouraging unseen creativity, and most importantly, helping people connect. Should we give up on that dream because the market’s biggest leaders failed us? Even though these networks reportedly got a lot wrong, they also got some things right. Take, for example, the never-seen-before accessibility to customers - brought by FacebookAdvertising - to businesses, small and big. Or, the fact that we can successfully organise an important protest / strike / events with the click of a button.
However, the primary problem with today’s social networks still remains: they’re already too big, and are trapped inside a profit-governed system that forces them to keep growing. Referencing the example above, Facebook cannot stop monetising our personal data because
entrepreneurs across the world have already settled into the world of digital advertising. The offerings of these networks have become the heart of every enterprise in the world. So, what can we do? Here are three radical approaches that come to mind.
- 1. Give more control to the users: Decide stakeholders and their respective stakes on the basisof how valuable the user’s contribution to the platform is. Some of these users, chosenpurely based on the value they offer, would have a seat at the table regarding the platform’s operational decisions.
- 2. Can social networks be drastically transformed to work like emails?
Reference: Mastodon, a social network that resembles Twitter, but without its centralisation. It’s growth is unprecedented: a million registered users since its inception five years ago.
It is resilient and adapts to the user’s interests, as opposed to being governed by a faceless corporation.
- 3. This one’s my personal favourite. Introducing a “magic cleanup button:” The biggest socialgiants in the world,Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook have been in existence for so long that they have become irresistible to anyone and everyone.
They,
by virtue of being enormous, have attracted a few bad actors too. They’re clogged with years worth of data. If we allowed users to click this “magic cleanup button” and automatically erase any apps or unfollow any people they don’t interact with, this would give them a clean slate and hopefully, reinstate the original social media dream. It would help create fresh privacy norms, help with hygiene data practices and keep networks relevant, and less crowded.
These suggestions, as radical as they may sound, do have shortcomings. They will directly affect the profitability of the world’s biggest networks, will have attached logistical issues and a whole lot more. However, experimentation is what led us here and it is what will get us out of it. Methods centric to optimising user experience might give us a ray of hope to cling by. I would go to the extent of saying, they might restore the original foundation that social
media was built upon.
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