{"id":684,"date":"2020-02-05T19:06:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T16:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/?p=684"},"modified":"2022-10-13T16:10:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:10:48","slug":"how-to-deal-with-social-media-economics-give-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/2020\/02\/05\/how-to-deal-with-social-media-economics-give-the-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Deal With Social Media? Economics Give the Answer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

H\u00e9lo\u00efse Cao<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: David Parkins for The Economist<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You\nprobably know that terrible feeling you get after seeing an ad on your phone\nconcerning the holiday destination you talked about with your colleague during your\ncoffee break. In these situations, we feel tracked by our phones. The most\nfrustrating and frightening thing about this is that we don\u2019t really know how\nand why it happens. Even if you try to limit the cookies and trackers when\nusing applications and surfing on the web, you feel like this is something beyond\nyour control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, you\nmight think that it is not so important because you have nothing to hide. But\nwhat if your social media data could be exploited in an effort to influence\nyour voting decisions? This is what Facebook\nand Cambridge Analytica were accused of doing during the American presidential\nelection of 2016<\/a>. The scandal also demonstrated that users\u2019 data can be\ncollected even if they don\u2019t directly take part in an activity that can be\nexploited. If your Facebook friends answer a survey, that may lead to your data\nbeing collected as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nusing the incognito mode in the browser is not sufficient, how would it be\npossible to make social media more responsible towards users? To answer this\nquestion, let\u2019s first have a look at how social media work. Social media are\nplatforms on which people can communicate, but they are also what economists\ncall double-sided markets. That is to say, they connect two different\ncustomers: the users and the companies that want their ads to be seen.\nConsequently, the more users and companies, the more efficient the media is.\nThis is the so-called network effect. A social media platform is useful and\nefficient only if a lot of people use it. And here is the reason why social\nmedia appears to be free for users. As the platform leads the double-sided\nmarket, it has the power to determine the price for customers. Social media\nchose to make the services free for us, the users, to attract us but also\nbecause we are the product from which social media can extract data and sell\nit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with\nthe exploitation of our data remains, but trying\nto understand the complex economic model teaches us a lot<\/a>. Several suggestions\nhave been made to reshape the social media model towards a more ethical one.\nOne option would be to\nstop making the platform free for users<\/a>. It wouldn\u2019t be easy for us to\nstart paying to use social media, but we are used to paying for our newspaper,\nso why not others services? Social media could offer several options to users:\none could be free from advertisements, another could have more features, and so\non. Others have suggested that users could have a \u201cdata account\u201d and choose\nwhich information to share with platforms in exchange for money. Yet another possible\nway to make social media more ethical would be to rely on public authorities\nand to put pressure on social media companies through legislation. Why not draw\ninspiration from the European General\nData Protection Regulation<\/a>? Among others things, it bolsters the\nrequirement for explicit and informed consent before data is processed, and\nensures that it can be withdrawn at any time. Users are thus more aware of what\nthey share on social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, would you be willing to pay to use social media? Do you trust governments to regulate them? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H\u00e9lo\u00efse Cao This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku. You probably know that terrible feeling you get after seeing an ad on your phone concerning the holiday destination you talked about with your colleague during your coffee break. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":693,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions\/693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}