So, over the past many months, and moreso over the past few days (again), there has been a massive clamour for ‘alternative’ social media / messaging apps to the ones that are considered the big bad tech companies today. Now building an app / platform is child’s play in today’s day & age. If you don’t believe me, just ask Hrithik & the WhiteHat Jr people… they’ll tell ya…😉😜!!! Anyway, the bigger point here is that the problem of platforms / apps is not the technology, It is the business model. And more importantly, it is the people using it.

People want everything high quality, top class, working fast with great UI and no glitches. And they want it for free. None of the people who are going rudaali about having their ‘privacy invaded’ have said that they are willing to pay a monthly subscription for using social media / messaging. So, people want a service but no one wants to pay to keep it going?!!! How is that supposed to work???

If you want to use Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, et al for free with more functions and more cool bells & whistles being added everyday, what else can they do to earn money than to monetise you? Selling advertising to you is how things started. But clearly that was not enough. So now they’re selling you (your profile) to advertisers. Don’t be alarmed when you realise that the entire business model behind you getting free usage of everything entails collecting individual personalised data to serve targeted ads to you. That is what funds the tech, the people behind it & the growth of the platforms. And what they need from you are the 2 most precious of human assets – time and privacy. They need you to use their platform for hours and bare the deepest darkest secrets of your desires on it. So they can sell those to advertisers who want to sell you what you desire.

The natural next step in monetising you as an individual is to monetise you as part of a group identity. Social media is a marketing platform. It has ALWAYS been one. We post our best side on social media but never the horrible things we do. So if social media platforms are marketing platforms, what prevents the platform from aligning itself to an ideology or a brand or a government that is willing to pay for it? Nothing. What that alignment comes with is limitation of content of one type and amplification of another. It’s not their fault. They’re a business. It is the fault of those people who have allowed themselves to be used & monetised.

Everyone that’s talking about moving from WhatsApp to Telegram, Twitter to Koo, blah to bloo, etc etc etc – ask yourself – how will these companies that you are moving to, bear the costs of maintaining their platforms / services / & sustaining the growth coming their way, if it is free? If you are not paying for it, then who is? And why?

Nothing comes for free – either you’re paying for something or you are the product!!!