The Social Dilemma on Netflix
Do Social media promote Surveillance Capitalism in the era of the Digital Age?
Social media platform created the buzz in the 21st century helping the users to connect with the old school friends, finding the missing persons of the family, spotting the blood donors, sharing our own thoughts/memories with the public and sending communication easier & faster. On the flip side, social media engages in psychological mining, political polarization by identifying and modifying the behavioural changes of the users through finding patterns in users engagement, the better predictions helps to target the users whereby promotes advertisements and digital marketing, instil notifications on the users display frequently to engage more and in the long run which creates the potential risk of social media addictions among them gradually.
Social media platform work on creating the algorithms on what sort of content you gonna look, manipulating your attention, manipulating your curiosity to extend your watch time which is called the perfect manipulation of your mind. Initially, the feed will be shown based on your interest and likes, but later redirected to the commercial interest(advertisements) of the social media platform. They created the customized world for you, what you ought to see and what should be your affiliations whereby putting our goals and interests at stake. Eventually, social media put you on sale for advertisers who pay money to them. What we are thinking that we are benefited by news-feed, social approval through likes and comments. But actually, social media became the market place by selling human perception through modifying behaviour to click the advertisements that have made Internet companies came to be the richest companies in the world.
Individual manipulation led to existential threats which collectively affects the society at large. There will be more distractions like populism, election hacking, fake news and polarization that created an inability to focus on real goals like no poverty, zero hunger, quality education, affordable healthcare, gender empowerment, Inclusive growth, climate change. etc
Make the World the better place to Live
Individually we need to address this problem of getting addiction with the social media apps by limiting the usage, delink from the recommended links and videos thereby putting our control over Internet usage to ensure digital well being. Evidence-based policymaking needs to be created to regulate Social media in order to respect the privacy of the users and creating a space for digital well being. The corrosive business model needs to be pulled out to leverage creativity and self-determination of digital citizens.
Personally just get out of the internet web and false consciousness to discover the real meaningful life present outside!
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