I saw a quote from the Facebook CEO:
What, you think because you’re paying Apple that you’re somehow in alignment with them?
Despite the admiration that has grown on me wrt how Facebook is lead and some of the things they are doing, my opinion of a company built solely around advertising is not based on how I think I align with them. It’s how I think they align with me. So anyone who offers me free mindless Internet lulz, ala the two OG big boys of search and social, has much more alignment with the folks who want to know about me. If Facebook and Google really wanted to align with customers more than advertisers they would offer me a paid model and guarantee they my information was private, secure and 100% safe from anyone, even their employees. A PCI level one account that would let me interact with the people I want to interact with without anyone else involved in the transfer of the data I generate. Oh yes, as part of the paid model they would also ask to pay me for any of the content I generated. I guessing here but this is not a technical limitations for either of the two leaders in search and social. What is sad is that most folks don’t have the time or technical acumen to do it themselves. It’s really not that hard. If you can do basic car or house repair you are smart enough to run a Wordpress site on digital ocean. So they default to the lowest common denominator and tell themselves a story that can justify the enormous time and resource drain the free service provides. Idk, search and social has to get a lot more brittle before it becomes irrelevant but I wish, I wish, Santa I wish they would offer me a reasonable paid option to be removed from the data sets they package up and sell. Apple asks me to pay this cost upfront and so I form the opinion that they are in alignment with me. As soon as their products and services make my life more difficult than a competitors they know I’ll switch. It’s just personal business decision. With search and social, meh, why should I invest my creativity and energy when there are more important and interesting problems to solve. Like how will my grandchildren a grandchildren discover things about me? How can I archive and curate my digital self such that they can have a conversation with me long after I have stopped generating digital footprints?
