The Future of our Digital Media

The future of our Digital Media is currently up in the air. Every social media company is in some sort of scandal, all of them are selling our personal information, and many of them are having to change policies due to outright lies and misrepresentation to advertisers about the traffic on their sites. Specifically, Facebook admitted that their “potential customer reach is an estimate, not a guarantee” due to lawsuits against them, and it is said that they estimated between 150%-900% more traffic than they actually have. Half of our internet interactions are not even with real people - but instead with bots that are posing to be human. Ai is bombarding our devices with constant notifications and advertising of stuff that pertains to our search history, click patterns, purchase habits, emails, and (most scarily) our personal conversations. There is even third-party tracking which is “the practice by which a tracker, other than the website directly visited by the user, traces or assists in tracking the user's visit to the site” (PiwikPro.) All of these things combine to become the mass algorithm that is specifically tailored to each and every one of us who spends any kind of time on the internet. The worst part - we allow this to happen by using centralized social media sites instead of their lesser known decentralized counterparts.

According to Steemit, the difference between the two is that centralized sites are “a social media platform that is owned and controlled by a central or singular entity” and decentralized sites are, “basically the opposite … in the sense that there is no central entity or authority that makes decisions on the platform instead the decisions are made by the users of the platform.” In other words, decentralized media sites don’t save your information, therefore it is harder for them to share it. “Because decentralized social media is not controlled by a single entity, user data is not stored in a central location that is vulnerable to hacking or surveillance. Instead, it is distributed across multiple servers and networks, making it more difficult for third parties to access or misuse user data.” (Flat Line Agency)

Let’s talk a bit about some of the more important social media company scandals of this year. Since I already mentioned it once, let’s first dive into the Facebook of it all. Facebook ended up settling a lawsuit that gave $725 million back to its users back in August from a privacy scandal that started back in 2007 - but that is not all. A few months later (in October,) “Meta was sued by more than three dozen states for knowingly using features on Instagram and Facebook to hook children to its platforms.” But these are just the tip of the iceberg for Facebook and Meta in general. Wikipedia has a pretty thorough list of all of the Lawsuits involving Meta platforms page. 

But Meta (Facebook/Instagram) is not alone in these allegations. Every social media has been in the spotlight for one privacy reason or another over 2023. Another really big one has been the TikTok ban, in which “lawmakers in the United States, Europe and Canada have escalated efforts to restrict access to TikTok…[because they] have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, may put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government.” 

And then, of course, there is the Elon Musk - the Twitter/X mess. The Twitter Files, released from December 2022 until March 2023 was a series of documents leaked by the new CEO Elon Musk consisting of  “thousands of internal documents, including many Slack discussions, between Twitter employees about their content moderation decisions.” (CBSNews)

As a result of substantial coordination between the government and Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other major participants in the information economy, the continued disclosure of the "Twitter Files" brought a new controversy to an end in 2022. While conservatives have known about and complained about Big Tech's censorship and shadowbanning for years, Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and the release of company emails to independent journalists proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Twitter both suppressed and blacklisted conservatives. (Criminal)

I use Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube - and I am very aware that all of these sites are definitely centralized. I know that they are tracking my every click, and I know they are then selling my information to third parties that are targeting their advertising to specify to my exact algorithm. What I don’t know is how to NOT allow that to happen. There are several up-and-coming new decentralized sites that will hopefully help us regain our independence and privacy online. According to TechScape these are the best alternatives if you want to go decentralized…

“Mastodon : The flagship service of the “fediverse”, a federated social network that operates on common protocols to ensure compatibility between thousands of distinct servers, each running one “instance” of the network. It is to Twitter as email is to messaging apps.” 

Biggest Flaw: It is confusing to use and understand.

Cohost : The anti-Twitter. A social network set up for – and by – people who like the basic offering of Twitter but explicitly hate the site, the software industry and almost everything about it except the basic idea of posting.

Biggest Flaw : The site is already stumbling under people’s interest, imposing a two-day waiting period before new users can post.

Discord : A chatroom service. Built around gaming, it started out as a way for gamers to coordinate voice chats and talk about the games they were playing. It’s now expanded to encourage anyone to make chatrooms, or “servers”, about anything for anyone. If you use Slack at work, the simplest thing is to think of Discord as Slack for the rest of your life. 

Biggest Flaw : Discord isn’t a social network; it’s more a tool for making new social networks.

Whatsapp : The world’s largest messaging app, the one Meta subsidiary that people have good things to say about, the place that you first heard about the lasagne they were making in Wembley Stadium. 

Biggest Flaw : Posting in a group chat is great, but making one isn’t.”

I use WhatsApp for work, but I could never imagine replacing Facebook with it in the way it is meant - and not that I use Discord or Twitter, but I don’t see those as adequate replacements for each other. Have you ever heard of Odysee or Steemit? Do you find them to be good replacements for YouTube? What about Gab, Mastodon, Mirror, DLive, Bluesky, Minds, DTube, HIVE BLOG, PeakD, Lenster, MAIN Community, Snort, and Ecency - which are the other new kids on the block. Have you heard of them? Should we trust a brand new company that we will know nothing about yet more than ones that we know we should distrust? 

I would love to know your thoughts!