Social Media Disruption

Social media is ubiquitous these days, a central pillar of how we in the western world live our lives. We post about the minutia of our lives and, we post about the big issues. Let’s face it, we post a lot of rubbish, we tell people what we had for breakfast, where we went last night and often we rant about people in our circles who’ve irritated or betrayed us.

But what about the people who have something important to say? What about the people who, among their ‘chatty’ friendly posts also have things to say that are important? Facebook is the most popular social media platform with 2 billion users, and, according to PEW research 8 out of 10 adults in the US who have internet access are on Facebook.

Young adults still use this the most but over 65s are increasingly joining too. They all have things they want to say, some of them admittedly irrelevant to most people but, and here’s the thing, any one of them may support an important cause, may have opinions that are worth listening to.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/

The problem is that Facebook (and other popular networks) are corporate enterprises. That is, their reason for existing is to make money for their shareholders not the content creators. Because they don’t create the content – we the public do.

Again, it’s true that a lot of the content is not at all earth shattering, it’s about who did what to who, cat memes, cute memes and other stuff that’s ephemeral. Videos, photos and ‘inspiring’ quotes that get passed around so much. But scattered within those posts are things that are important to all of us. Global warming, disaster relief, health news, political news and so on.

Unfortunately, those very platforms we use every day have no incentive to ensure that what we see, that can impact how we feel about those issues, is actually true. FAKE NEWS is the new norm. Even reputable news sources can get caught up in it, reporting on a story without checking sources.

Not only that, but the platforms themselves dictate what you see, based on what you’ve interacted with and, how much advertisers are willing to pay, all determines what you see in your news feed. Ever wondered why you see so few posts form a particular friend or page? Check to see how often you’ve responded to their posts in some way.

Try an experiment, like, share and comment on content you would not normally be interested in, click on a few ads and see what happens to your news feed, you may be very surprised.

It’s Time to Disrupt

There’s a new player in town, a new player that sees a better way for all of us to continue to use our favourite social media but with no overarching algorithm dictating what we do and don’t see.

Welcome to the world of Ong Social. https://ong.social/

There are quite a few social media platforms out there that promote themselves as a place to “Get paid for sharing” some have been around for a while but have never really taken off. Some are relatively new like Steemit.

What none of them do however is let you easily maintain your presence on places like Facebook etc. Retain immutable ownership of your content. Share in ad revenue AND control what ads are shown alongside your content.

Ong Social is set to disrupt social media because now only do you get to share ad revenue, but according to their whitepaper https://www.ongcoin.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/onG-social-ICO-8-11-17.pdf you can also earn coins from Maidsafe and Storj from the onG.social dashboard.

Some people worry that onG is competing with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc. This is not so, it’s a tool to share your content on all these networks, stay in touch with friends and family and do all that you normally do. The difference is that for the important stuff, the content that can change the world, a mind, a community, this content will not be buried because someone has spent money.

Fake News

Ong Social has a way for you to control fake news too, you can 'downvote' news and content that you feel is fake, enough people downvoting the same content will mean that it gets less exposure, not censorship but validation. If the news is valid and true you upvote it, when it's fake, you downvote it. There will be no monetary incentive to post fake news, unlike with Facebook etc.

Your content, your passions will, if they’re valuable to the wider community get shared and promoted and, you’ll earn some rewards. You can do all that you do on Facebook, you can promote, sell products and services, post cat memes and tell the world what you had for breakfast. You can talk about important things and the minutia of life, the difference is, you get paid.

Now that's what I call 'the people's social media'.