Social Media Facts
See, we all use social media, Facebook and all. For this we don’t have to spend a single rupee, Social Media is free. But the owners of these social networking sites are maintaining data centres by spending billions of dollars. So that we can upload photos and videos. If we just talk about Facebook, they have 18 data centres, which costs more than 20 billion dollars. Just like this, every social media site has to spend billions of dollars. Just then a networking site is able to run. So in today’s date when people sell air trapped inside a why social media is free? let’s see the truth of social media.
Social Media Is Free ?
Now you can say, the data we use, they make money out it. And some people believe that even if they take our data, we don’t have such secret, even if you take email-ids, name, we don’t have anything to hide. So see, it’s not that simple. Today you will get to know everything in detail. How you are presented with the ad of what you are thinking Why does BMW’s ad only goes to that person who can afford it Why not poor people? And how do these political parties connected to this data.
Social Media Agreement
In todays time, you can see, tech billionaires are plentiful in the richest person list. YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Linkedin, every social media platform earns in billions. Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of Amazon Larry Page of Google, Zhang Yiming of Tiktok all of these tech billionaires are the most powerful people in todays time. So basically what they did is, gave free social networking through their app, gave entertainment for free and gathered people’s data. And then controlled people’s attention with that data. And played targeted advertisements.
When you make an account on a social networking site, then there’s a deal between you and that social networking site, and that deal is, you will give your data to the social media site and in exchange they will give you networking and entertainment. During making of account, the small click that you do for the terms and conditions, that is like signing a legal agreement which deals with that.
Social Media “Terms & Condition” Hacking Tricks
Before making an account on social media, when you click yes on the terms, after that they get eligible to take your data. That’s why terms and conditions are made in a very boring manner. Many legal terms are used in it, which requires a lawyer to read it. That is, its very difficult to be read by a normal person.
a person gets stuck hours trying to read it. That’s why people click yes without reading. These terms and condition are intentionally made 20,000 words long, its format is also made intentionally boring. Whether its property agreement or court’s document, they are shown like that, so that you don’t feel like reading it.
How Social Media Make Money
You can understand it like this, you made a social networking site of yourself, and gave it for free to the whole country. People are using it and are connecting within country. They are liking, commenting and the data is being collected from everywhere. And before making an account, you clicked that they can use your data. Like this, you get the data of people in your country. Now you picked that data, and you get to know using data science and attention engineers, that the people in area of “XYZ” in your country drink more coffee and are drinking at a specific time. So what you did is, you went to a big coffee company, you said to the company, there’s no use of putting ads in TV, newspaper and banners, give me your ads and I will show the ad to those who are addicted to coffee.
I know their every habit, I have the data and there will be more conversion from this there’s more conversion than your traditional advertisement ways. But a mobile is the closest to a person. If you get into someone’s phone, then how much more personal can you get? So in this way, that’s how a model, an upgraded version of advertisement was made. Like this social media is directly free but indirectly it is not free for anyone who using it.
Social Media Data Collection
The data that has been collected, using this your behaviour and next actions can be controlled, and this is improving day by day. Using this data, who you are dating, which job offer you have, which insurance you have, who can pay, who cannot pay, who can click on which advertisement, which political party they support, what are their religious opinion, which one they will vote. All of these things can be known. so if you want, you can do that there. So after continuously following up, sending emails, Now you can think, if you get so much detail of someone, then how easy is it to manipulate it.
Social Media Data Mining
Large amount of data, that is, the behaviour of a population and their pattern is understood. Then they are shown targeted content. Nowadays, even though you are following anyone, but social media platform would recommend you content themselves. If you watch good content, your growth would be good because of it, that is not important for the social media company, what’s important is for you to stay on their app. That’s why, analysing you data, that type of content is served for you that gets you stuck for longer.
There’s a surprise for you on every scroll. In the hopes of finding something new next time, people spend 4, 5 hours on these apps. And if you spend 1-2 hours on reels, then there’s such a high dopamine release, that it gets difficult to focus on other works. Those who read books or students, you will notice focus instantly after seeing reels is very difficult.
Dangers Of Social Media
Now since the data is valuable, hackers attack from different sites, and steal data. For doing identity fraud. Assume you made a profile on Ola or Uber, and attacking their server, hackers steal your data and after stealing it, hackers either sell the data or do identity fraud. Like in 2021, hackers stole 4.5 million customer data. These guys were maintaining the data for years, by creating user accounts. That’s how 20 million customer’s data of Big Basket was stolen, and was sold to the dark web. And this is not a small thing because they also do phishing attacks and all after stealing data.
Social Media Competition
In 2013, there was a documentary, Terms and Conditions may apply you should see it. They showed how social media companies leak your data and misuse it, how they sell it. There’s a lot of competition in social media companies themselves too over attention. The platform with the most users, there will be more activity on that platform, and more attention and more data can be collected. That is, more profit. And after collecting more data, they make patterns from it, so that they can more accurately guess, what the next step of the user will be.
That’s why all of these social media companies have the same aim, for which they work day and night, to get you stuck however to their app. The owner of Netflix said that Facebook, Google are our competitions. but the market is very big, our greatest competition is the person’s sleep. Because that’s the time, when no algo works on the user.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the reality of social media is that it may be free to use for individuals, but behind the scenes, social networking sites like Facebook invest billions of dollars in data centres to provide us with the platform for uploading photos and videos. However, it’s important to understand that when we sign up for a social media account, we agree to give away our data in exchange for networking and entertainment. Ultimately, social media is a powerful tool that should be used responsibly and with awareness of the implications of sharing personal data.
