In the begining,social media promised to connect us to existing friends , help us from new relationship ,and as a result help make us find happier lives . Facebook,initially was just a way for new students to meet new friendes,Quora was a way to get crowdsourced answers,and Twitter sort of a way to alert friends about things they might find intresting.
Today Facebook is the home of fake news,with way too many ads for companies focused on finding new way to cheat you out of your hard-earned money .Twitter is increasingly a place to experience or hand out abuse.Quora,which ironically is a source for the cause of this problem,has drifted into providing a forum for those that like alternative history.
All are guilty of allowing unhealthy manipulation ,are incresingly viewed as existential risks,and it is incresingly hard to argue against the impression that the brilliant people avoid these platforms.This suggestes that,eventually,governments will grow tired of these services and either fine them into obsolesence or treat them like utillities with heavy government oversight- or even government controle owenership.
I like to think of solutions to problemes ,not just point out that outcomes are dire - so let let's talk about what is likely to happen to social media companies and how they might work to prevent that outcome.we'll close with my product of the week,a category-busting new smartwatch from OnePlus that will ship in few days.
The Problem-Who's The Customer?
One of the unfortunate things that survived when the internet bubble brust a couple of decades ago was this idea that users and cutomers could be decoupled by providing free services to users that advertisers paid for This decoupling is at the heart of the problem.
When ethics come into conflict with revenues , ethics tends almost always to lose .At the heart of the problem is that social media's incentives are directly opposed to making these platforms safer and more beneficial for those that use them.
Fixing Social Media
Since the core problem resulted from the decoupling of revenue from the users,the fix will likely start with coming up with ways to provide benifites that the user might find valuable enough to fund.Because social media posts are tied to your brand,perhaps a service that highlighted things that you should comment on and repost to advance your brand ,and red-flagging things that might hurt it ,would be worth funding.
You likely could focous on brand protection,but that kind of sounds like a shakedown program given that social media is the cause of risk.I've certainly seen companies employees get aggressivly proactive in generating damage for those that don't pay for services like this,so protection alone seems to come with too many risks.
It is never good when your service is highlighted as the incresing source of scams.
In other words ,get under the rhetoric and focous on the parts that impact your life .I can envision three alerts ,no material impact ,positive impact ,and negetive impact ,with a link to explain why that postion was taken for transprency and to further bolster trust in the service.
Wrapping Up
Netting this out,paid social media would become a place that would help your carrier ,improve the qulity of your friendship (not just the number of fake friends😂 )and help you make decisions that would improve the quality of your life on your terms.
THANK YOU💓.
sidheswarnayak756@gmail.com
IG- @snk_world
Nice
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