Are you sold on social media or somewhat sceptical about the benefits of ceding effective control of the internet to a handful of platforms that curate your business and personal life and dish up the dollops of news they think you want to hear?
While Australians have embraced social media in droves over the past decade – almost eight in 10 of us are users, according to the Sensis 2018 Yellow Social Media Report – many individuals continue to lament what we’ve lost in the process: an open web where discourse is not controlled by big businesses whose business is data – ours.
Of course, social is far from the Great Satan in digital form. It’s delivered benefits aplenty to the plethora of Australian small businesses which have harnessed its power as a low-cost marketing tool to engage with customers and build brands.
Facebook research published by Fairfax Media in 2017 revealed more than one in three Australian small and medium enterprises with a presence on the platform had used it to build their businesses.
The downside of social
On the flipside, the rise and rise of social media has been linked to “higher levels of loneliness, envy, anxiety, depression, narcissism and decreased social skills” among the young, according to University of NSW academics. Put it down to the psychological effects of “having one’s everyday affairs publicly judged” they opine.
In the public arena, social platforms have enabled and amplified a smorgasbord of negative behaviours and developments – think cyber-bullying and abuse, misinformation and hate speech, to name a few.
Millions of individuals have chosen to call time on connecting online via social platforms, according to recent research from the Pew Research Centre. It found almost three-quarters of Facebook users had adjusted their privacy settings, undergone temporary digital detoxes or removed the app from their mobile devices.
The impending data usage crackdown
What forces might lead to the recreation of the digital zeitgeist of a decade or two ago, when the web was open and personal data had not yet become a commodity to be manipulated and exploited?
Data privacy laws are likely to play a part. Along with a host of other countries and the European Union, Australia has introduced laws which govern the way individuals’ data is obtained, stored and used. Their object is to transfer control of personal data back to the individuals to whom it pertains. That’s at fundamental odds with the way social media platforms currently operate and a showdown, or reckoning, between the two camps seems an inevitability, in time.
We’re also seeing some grassroots initiatives such as the Indie Web, which is seeking ways to link people across platforms without their data being captured and “owned” by a single entity or enterprise.
These are small steps, perhaps, but if enough people take them, the web may once again become what it was at inception – a trustworthy, open platform for bringing individuals together to share ideas and insights, not a digital echo chamber where data is harvested to enrich largely unaccountable corporate concerns.
And Australians who’d like to wean themselves off “big social” should not go cold turkey on the connections front. The option to subscribe to RSS feeds is there and it remains a valid way to stay connected with sites and individuals whose ideas and opinions we value.
Chris Gibbs, General Manager Asia Pacific and Japan, Acquia
