Is It Time To Stop Using Social Media? (counterpunch.org)

Slashdot reader Nicola Hahn writes: Bulk data collection isn't the work of a couple of bad apples. Corporate social media is largely predicated on stockpiling and mining user information. As Zuckerberg explained to lawmakers, it's their business model...

While Zuckerberg has offered public apologias, spurring genuine regulation will probably be left to the public. Having said that, confronting an economic sector which makes up one of the country's largest political lobbying blocks might not be a tenable path in the short term.

The best immediate option for netizens may be to opt out of social media entirely.
The original submission links to this call-to-action from Counterpunch: Take personal responsibility for your own social life. Go back to engaging flesh and blood people without tech companies serving as an intermediary. Eschew the narcissistic impulse to broadcast the excruciating minutiae of your life to the world. Refuse to accept the mandate that you must participate in social media in order to participate in society. Reclaim your autonomy.

Comments

It's time to user smaller specific social media

[Maxo-Texas]

We should not have more than 10% of the population on any given social media platform.

I haven't used facebook for almost a decade. I saw it was a bad actor from the beginning.

But Google is just as bad but not as obvious as is any other social media.

You are the product.

But part of their power depends on having most people on their platform. If they can't get more than a fraction of people on their platform, then they cannot build comprehensive profiles.

Re:It's time to user smaller specific social media

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's time to boycott all those silos you call "platforms" and go back to open protocols. Everybody should physically own their data (including encrypted cloud storage, as long as the key never leaves the client) and connect with each other over a secure open protocol.

Wrong question; You shouldn't have used it at all.

[wierd_w]

Of course, it is never too late to realize your mistake in believing it was ever OK to give a soulless corporation access to your personal information, and thus also allow HR to look at all your party pics where you got drunk, and other things you really dont want your professional career life to know about-- but really, what ever made you guys think it was even a good idea to start with?

I remember when the very idea of using your real name online was a point and shame offense.

We need to get back to that kind of thing,

Re:Wrong question; You shouldn't have used it at a

[AmiMoJo]

Before dedicated social networks we used mailing lists, Usenet and forums. They were great because you could meet interesting, like-minded people, and they didn't harvest your personal data.

These days it's harder to avoid social networks. They offer a lot of features that people want, like easy photo sharing and real-time chat built in. Sure, you can replicate it all, but try getting random non-techies to install an IRC client, or spell Diaspora.

Modern life has become reliant on those services. People are too busy, they aren't going to post everything to five different networks and your personal email address.

The only solution is an open protocol. Make Facebook a protocol, let people choose the platform and client that suits them the best.

User data collection powers the free internet

[petes_PoV]

"How would you like to pay?"

The question we hear many times a day. Yet we expect that almost all websites will not charge us. Even though they have costs: depreciation, electricity, staff, buildings - that someone has to pay for.

So would the public be willing to hand over a credit card to use a website? Experience shows that almost nobody does, when compared with the billions of accesses per day that come from subscribers to "free" sites. And what happens to "privacy" then? We would just trade fears of all the lies we tell when we subscribe to a website being replaced with the far more serious fears of having our card details stolen, bought and sold.

Personally, I don't give a damn about who knows when my date of birth was, what I last bought from Amazon or whether I "liked" a particular posting or not. It seems to me that the only people who do worry, do so about how other people might be losing their privacy - not about their own. If it bothers you, then stop. If it doesn't then ignore all the media frenzy. Though since almost all the online sites that are carrying scare stories about mass data collection are doing exactly the same thing they criticise FB and social media in general, of doing.