The Power of the Social Media Giants - The Free World of Accessibility
The power of the social media giants have changed the modern approach of how businesses and other stakeholders have pursued the communication framework introduced by these giants. The psychology of smart technological devices has become a prevalent subject of focus where globalisation has highlighted this notion further. The advancement of technology has strengthened the infrastructures of these giants to reach a status of prowess where they cannot be underestimated in the push to destroy the masses through data equity.
Globalisation has influenced technology and with its influence, it has strengthened the understanding of how the flow of communication should be, which has increased the ability for devices to perform to their highest capabilities so that stakeholders can communicate with businesses and government through these platforms. The facade of it all is that it can change the mindsets of individuals if they think of what these giants can do. In this age of information, the negligence of using inaccurate information is so apparent that ignorance can sometimes be bliss. The new age of information has made these giants navigate through communities that are so indigenous and these communities have become broken where they have been poisoned by the artefacts of social networking.
Data is centralised to enhance the mechanisms of the algorithms that can check individuals’ status and allow individuals to be socialite in the circles of powerful collectives. These algorithms are sought to be the new mind readers which aims to influence the way an individual likes a post or shares with their peers and family members. However, these algorithms can change demographic parameters and share data with third party organisations that these giants have strong affiliations with. The shared data is not concerning and an individual’s thought might be this - these giants think about us and that is why they have all these privacy settings to protect us. The true idea of privacy settings is that they are implemented to look good on the surface level so that these giants do not get in trouble with policymakers. One factor is that data is the biggest commodity in the global marketplace even surpassing oil and gold. Data can manufacture marketing capital which can generate billions in revenue for corporations because the data obtained can be used to inform retailers how they can influence to purchase products from its commercial banking operations so that credit can be obtained which then open the doors to the world of consumerism (high disposable income equals to economic growth - corporations get richer and powerful).
The exploration of data shows how the free world of accessibility is becoming common and how some millennials, Gen Z and Y users have given consent for these giants to explore their accounts and use their data to access private information which can lead to detrimental effects. Social media giants have been equipped with tools and frameworks that have made them sustainable to pursue goals that highlight power and greed. The things that Mark Zuckerberg has said whilst he is under oath is astonishing and he continues to lie about Facebook's data privacy settings. Thus, politicians still allow him to pursue the metaverse notion. This highlights the free world of data accessibility because the metaverse is going to change the interconnectedness of individuals and create a division amongst people that do not want to use social media. The distinction of the metaverse is to create a paradoxical web universe that will disarm human beings from interactions with one another but instead replace them with robotic devices that can programme individuals to believe whatever they want them to believe.
The idea of the metaverse should be simple but to a common person, it can be vague in terms of understanding the origins of this para-social media platform. The ability of Twitter to tolerate abuse and hatred on its platform without any sanctions in place shows how data via interactions can be manufactured to create wealth. The control in Africa by Facebook shows its dominance because Facebook has mined data from people in Africa through the lack of education and information to understand the core of its operations. The opportunity to exploit Africa is evident as the exploration of natural resources enables Facebook to enhance its products for the metaverse and expand its service designs to suit the masses in the global sphere. The lack of education has always remained on the agenda as Facebook has always appealed to people that are easily influenced to follow the Facebook-economic where capital is distributed to influencers to entice individuals to believe the artefacts of its platforms and at the same time, extract data to be profitable.
In regards to profitability, the idea of YouTube has been a game changer because Google's idea to make YouTube as a separate entity has generated wealth and increased value at a substantial rate. This is called the ‘YouTube ideation’ and this ideation is designed to make ordinary people rich so that individuals can pursue to the same beliefs but in the wider context, it is a genius approach because the extraction of data is made to be believable whilst privacy settings can be relaxed (to the users, they are just watching videos and YouTube is not extracting any data). This notion is ignorant because watching videos are ways to extract data ingeniously from users and the YouTube concept has become profitable in many ways. Firstly, look at the way they have given individuals an influencer status where they are rich from creating video content without being talented because YouTube knows that people influence people and rich individuals influence poor people. Through this concept, YouTube has managed to extract and share data of millions of users so that corporations can use it for marketing purposes. The YouTube system feeds corporate marketing via data sharing and mining.
In hindsight, Snapchat and TikTok have created the ‘lazy culture’ where the ten second videos do not put any pressure on individuals’ cognitive load. Many would argue that ten second videos are advertisers’ dreams because the traditional way of creating two minutes content for products and services are long gone and these platforms provide the stability needed to ensure that users are getting the messages from advertisements quicker and faster. Although the lazy culture ideology might be argued for many reasons, the number of users for Snapchat and Tik Tok have reached billions and the platforms continue to grow respectively which has increased the data extraction and the operations of the free world data control and accessibility.
The verbal war between the US and China stem from the data mining of TikTok especially in the US market where TikTok has the most users in the world. The US government fears that the data that Tik Tok has extracted from US citizens could have an impact on its cyber security and this is why the US is mindful of the Chinese based company. The disappearing posts after a short while on Snapchat has always been a mystery and what happens to the data (or posts) have never been questioned by the users. These disappearing posts are part of the mechanism of being exploited by these powerful giants.
Facebook’s metaverse is indestructible because this mechanic platform has learned our behaviours over the last two decades and these robotic features know what individuals are thinking of and what they are doing. All these giants would become one entity in the future because the free world has allowed them to collect data to exert their dominance.