Get Cyber-Woke You Fools
Facebook Mishandles Your Personal Data and Gets Rich From it While Your Privacy Gets Violated
Free services such as Facebook, Google, etc., that make their money by selling your data will continue to handle your personal information irresponsibly no matter how many privacy violations happen if the people who use their services don’t do anything that threatens the companies’ profits. Why should they adopt business practices that benefit their users if their users continue to use the service after privacy violations become public?
We’ve all gotten used to free services, and the companies that provide free services have gotten used to our complacency. So, now that we know of the privacy breaches and irresponsible handling of our data that make the privacy breaches easier to happen, what questions should we be asking ourselves? A good one is, “Do I really want to continue using a service that gets wealthy from my data and doesn’t think my data is important enough to protect responsibly?” The simple answer is no, but it’s incredibly difficult to do because Facebook is a big part of people’s lives (or so those people think). Most people don’t need Facebook. They use it mainly for entertainment or to keep track of people they used to know(snooping on others when they should be concentrating on themselves). Those people can make their own site or start a blog on Wordpress and be okay, and that’ll be much better for them than Facebook. But why do that when making a free account without having to learn anything is so much easier than starting a site or blog?
What about small businesses, entreprenuers, and other individuals and brands that are making money on Facebook? Not only do they not want to go somewhere else, they do not want anybody else leaving because that’s a loss of potential income. Facebook is a great place to make money for businesses and individuals, but it’s come at a heavy cost to society. Trump being elected is one negative effect of Facebook that most reasonable people can agree on. Lying, misinformation, and brainwashing would never had affected such a large portion of the population without Facebook as it currently is. The most devious and harmful aspect of Facebook is the ability to facilitate the spread of misinformation, lies, propaganda, and brainwashing on a massive scale. These are and have always been the biggest threats to a free and open democratic society.
Two things need to happen to Facebook. It needs to be regulated by a new government agency. An agency potentially called the Social Media Protection Agency. Their job should be to make sure the owner and executives of social media companies are liable for the irresponsible handling of their users’ data. Another job of this agency should be to identify producers and publishers of fake news, which aim to misinform and to brainwash the public, and to ban them from using social media. If social media companies like Facebook, Reddit, etc., don’t follow regulations and refuse to ban users or entities which produce fake news, they will be heavily fined and sanctioned.
Freedom of speech shouldn’t allow weaponized speech to operate on major platforms. Speech that promotes ideas and thinking that is harmful and detrimental to society should be banned from social media or any other major platforms. If an individual or company wants to publish lies and misinformation to brainwash people and regress society, they can start their own web site by buying their own domain.
This is tricky business because the agency could eventually be used to do the opposite of what it’s intended to do like what’s currently happening under the Trump Administration and the various government agencies such as the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. A solution would be to make a potential Social Media Protection Agency fully independent from any Party, Congress, and Administration. I’m sure there’s a way to solve this issue if the right minds apply themselves.
Another thing which needs to happen for services that create wealth directly from user data is to pay a percentage of the profits to the users. It’s the users’ data which creates the wealth, so it makes sense for users to receive a check from the profits which they literally helped create. The owner of the company, a Mark Zuckerburg type, and his executives and employees would still get the lion’s share (something like sixty percent while forty percent goes to all the users equally excluding businesses and people making money from the platform). This isn’t entitlement or wanting something for nothing. I can hear the propaganda now, “Lazy people want companies to pay them for doing nothing.” The users provide the data and time, and social media companies turn the data and time spent logged in into wealth. The user is literally part of the wealth-creation process, so they earned their share of the profits. With policies like these, and a tax system which favors society and not corporations and rich people, we could fund a Basic Income for our society.
I understand that many people are dependent on Facebook, Google, etc. But it’s time for new ideas and new policies that work for society to enter the discussion. Regulation should have social media companies liable for bad actors which want to misinform and brainwash the public with lies aimed at harming society for the benefit of some wealthy masters. Creating a new and independent agency which regulates social media is absolutely necessary.
We live in an online world, that’s no longer a debate, and we need new thinking and policies which protect society from abusers of huge platforms which social media companies provide. Simply put, we need to get cyber-woke.
