It's been bothering me for quite some time that social media tends to be more beneficial for the service provider than the consumer.
Of course, it's great that we've been gifted the ability of communicating in any form of multimedia to most of our friends at practically the same time. No complaints there!
Then again, the trade-off tends to be that we relinquish our own private information for free. In other words, social media reaps our digital capital... free of charge!
Let me make a small list of some of the valuable information that we give away. When I say valuable, I mean that it is lucrative because it can be traded by us or other people for money.
- e-mail address
- telephone number
- personal pictures
- location
And more! (I lack omniscience)
On top of that, most social media websites already make a ton of money with text adds and product referrals, which in turn become more valuable when compounded with the information above.
Imagine Mark Zuckerberg sold our contact information to various companies across the world. Hundreds of millions of Facebook user records could amount to millions of dollars for the e-mails alone.
But it's illegal?
True. But he could move somewhere where that does not apply. Like the Principality of Sealand, for example. And then admittedly pray that the angry mob (rest of the world) does not find him and savagely rip him apart like Mussolini and his wife. That's another story though...
Basically speaking, don't just give away your information like it's nothing. It exposes you to more junk and allows other people to profit from it. Unless that's what you're looking for. Then help yourself by all means!
And luckily, because you're reading this, you've already discovered a much better alternative ;)
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