The continuing story of social networking

For some time now I’ve had this strange, uneasy feeling about social networks, without being able to clearly define it, to put it in words. Yesterday I found the sentence that says it so well: “On social networks you are not the client, you are the product they are actual selling and trading.” It came as an online comment posted by one of the readers of the French newspaper Le Figaro. It is the perfect expression, the translation of my feeling, and it is so true.

The reader was reacting to the just announced upcoming purchase of LinkedIn by Microsoft. It will be one of the most important takeovers by Microsoft since it acquired Skype in 2011 for $8 billion. The declared value of the LinkedIn deal alone, a trifle $36 billion, should make us realise, more than ever, that these people don’t do it just to please you, to entertain you, without a massive return in their favour. Whatever you the subscriber — I mean the product — get from them, they get a thousand times more from you. What hurts is the insidious, hidden character of what and how they get it from you.

Today, twelve years after Facebook, the most celebrated of them all, was launched, everyone knows how social networks profile you and then use the profiling mainly but not only in outrageously efficient targeted advertising. And yet, those who refrain are a minority. Statista.com estimates that Facebook has 1.6 billion active users and LinkedIn 433 million.

Whereas Facebook audience is global, covering all categories, networks like LinkedIn target professionals, those who want to post their business profile, who may be looking for a job, to recruit for a job, or simply who want to get in touch with colleagues or people in the same discipline. It is not about the witty thought of the day, of the children’s birthday pictures or someone’s graduation or trip to Hawaii.

Facebook, LinkedIn or other, whether personal or professional oriented, they all are more or less invasive. What is amazing is to see the vast majority gladly live with the “strings attached” phenomenon, with the knowledge that the network is using them.

Twelve years ago one could be forgiven because they would not know, but today with the countless stories exposing to the whole world, showing how personal data is collected and put to work, there’s hardly anyone left who is not aware of the real motive behind networking, of the fact that — again — the user is the real product in this incredibly lucrative market.

Social networks started in such a smart way that the number of those who became addicts now by far outweighs those who still enjoy some kind of self-control over their social networking activity. And of course, once you are addicted you don’t stop, even if you know how bad it may be for your health.

If you fully realise how you are being profiled and exploited as a product by social networks and do not mind the situation, given the benefit or the enjoyment you find in it, then it is all but fair and square. 

Sure, I do have a Facebook and a LinkedIn account. I’m even on Instagram (but not on Snapchat yet…), if only to please my children and their friends, to show how “young at heart and high-tech” I am. In the end I just cannot afford not to know how these networks function, what they do, how they do it. However, I don’t frequently visit and I always disclose as few as possible details about my life, my family, my friends and my work. I am extremely careful with any picture I happen to upload there, that is if and whenever I do upload any.

Congrats Microsoft.