What Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Tell Us About Social Media?
Dysfunctional is not the new normal.
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have strengthened the case for digital technology has and given social networking a genuine community purpose.
There has been a major traffic surge in many social networking sites and apps such as Facebook, Zoom, Google Hangouts, TikTok, and Instagram.
The quarantine has compelled many people to resort to distant socializing and social media has provided them with means to connect with their friends and relatives but at the cost of their privacy.
Most social networking apps and services are designed to track user information and monetize them.
The coronavirus pandemic has also led to the emergence of surveillance capitalism and sent trackers rushing to maximize the opportunity presented by this unprecedented crisis.
Tech and ad giants, that are already in the business of mass surveillance, are getting involved in the crisis by offering data and apps for COVID-19 tracking.
But social media platforms should be careful because the quarantine has given users more time to read their privacy policies.
3 KEY POINTS
- The coronavirus quarantine has resulted in a significant increase in social media users.
- Social media has provided people with ways to connect remotely with others but at the expense of their privacy and the reduction of human connection to meaningless transactions.
- Many social media platforms were designed to profit from collecting and monetizing user information.
“It’s never been clearer how these attention-hogging apps and services are designed to disrupt and monetize us; nudging us to swap in-person socializing for virtualized fuzz designed to be data-mined and monetized by the same middlemen who’ve inserted themselves unasked into our private and social lives,” says Natasha Lomas of TechCrunch.
Article source: https://tcrn.ch/3e4YDeK
#DataManagement, #COVID-19, #SocialMedia
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