This was an interesting chapter that I've probably talked about. Maybe not, but I've definitely learned about it before from the book "Blockchain 2035" & "Life After Google."
These days we live in an attention economy. So what that means is most the time you spend online, viewing YouTube, Facebook, Twitter & reading news articles is spent in the currency of time. With the time you give these websites, they collect data about who you are, what your interest are, your hobbies, political views, even to go as far as your sexual orientation is, believe it or not.
With this time that you are giving these websites, they sell to advertisers & 3rd party companies who want to know information about people so they could potentially later sell you something in the future.
There is a boatload of information out there on the web. It'll take you 30,000,000 years to view every page of it & it's growing at an almost infinite pace. But this information isn't free. (Unless you can download the information at supersonic speed right to your brain.) You spend your time (like you are right now) reading this hive post. It's up to you to decide whether or not what you are viewing is worth your time or not. As for me, I really don't use social media for time-wasting activities. I like to learn about & share my interest with other people about my hobbies & interest. Writing this post for you all I value it because I want to share this information with other people to educate them on their time.
This is an attention economy, it may say it's "free", but in all honesty its not. If you're really interested in learning more about this, I just read a book called "Life After Google." (The link is posted at the top of this page in red) This book really go in-depth about this topic, so much more than I could & it'll explain it much better than I can. It is kind of a hard read but well worth the read.
Thank you for taking the time for reading this post. If you've made it this far, please, tell me your opinion on this subject. I'm opening to hear different opinions on this matter.