Facebook Monday the beginning of the web 3.0 age https://blog.datafund.net/facebook-monday-the-beginning-of-the-web-3-0-age-77989706494d … #datafund #dataprivacy #GDPR #dataprotection #privacy
Marlboro Friday
In our line of work historical milestones get named after days when a symbol’s/brand’s stock price drops significantly. Marlboro Friday is important to the branding industry — it opened up the subject of how much a brand is really worth. And almost everything that we know about branding has happened since that Friday, 2.4.1993. Following this milestone, a whole new methodology of calculating a brand’s value and brand-management practices emerged; mechanisms were created that make it possible for a brand to represent the company’s main value. In the age of data, we all know data has power, these kinds of practices don’t yet exist.
We are yet to see if the expression Facebook Monday will stick, but in my opinion, there are quite a lot of reasons for this to happen:
Facebook is the main symbol of Internet 2.0 — so we have the right brand,
there was a tangible drop in its stock price and
it was on a Monday.
I guess there is something to it, considering the amount of time it took Facebook to come up with a response.
It is also very likely we’re not dealing with an isolated case — others will follow, but this one, the first one, will be the symbolic mark of the pinnacle, and the beginning of the end, of Internet 2.0 as we know it. Cambridge Analytica was doing some weird things and everybody knew that Facebook was their main sandbox. And they were doing that for years… It had to blow up at some point.
Wrong, we do care!
That still leaves us with the question — what’s the main point? This Monday the business model of the Internet 2.0 received a defining blow. The giants of the internet are giving away services free in exchange for gathering and using the footprints we leave behind. This whole economy, its business model, is based on an assumption that we, the individuals, don’t care what happens to our data.
When this assumption fails, the Internet 2.0 crumbles. We’re not far from that inflection point, and it all started on 12.3.2018. The looming GDPR directive: it will come into force in May, and will probably seal the fate of Internet 2.0. Together with its demise, a hefty chunk of the data-abusing economy could go down with it.
No more data, no more data business?
If we’re very extreme, the concept of “data is the new oil” is as good as dead at the moment. With GDPR data basically disappears. The pumps we have been using until now won’t work anymore. So, if Marlboro Friday marks the beginning of a serious development in branding, Facebook Monday could mark the beginning of a responsible and ethical use of consumer data, in which the consumers will be the ones that decide each use of their data.
As long as the goal was targeted “informing” about new products and services, and as long as this new marketing approach had a proven track record, things were fine. The problem arose when this same machine gave us Trump and Brexit. Considering how Cambridge Analytica openly touted the effectiveness of their tools, and since we now have definitive proof their methods were illegal, sooner or later the status of the 2016 American elections and Brexit will come into question. And this is happening! We’re therefore faced with an ethical issue — Gregor Žavcer (Datafund) recently held a talk on this issue.
Facebook Monday doesn’t as much surprise as it confirms the sneaking suspicions that have haunted us for a while now. Those of us who are involved in privacy advocacy have been warning people about it for a long time.
The Internet 2.0 is dead, long live the blockchain
Usually, before something leaves this world, something new is born. At the beginning, this little creature is a bit clumsy, it falls and gets up again… This is the phase in which the makings of the new internet, the Internet 3.0, are right now. The problems plaguing Internet 2.0 — identification, trackability, the chance of micropayments — are easily solved in version 3.0 and from the start.
It is not Facebook issue that questioned the Internet as we know today. Gavin Wood proposed the vision of Web 3.0 back in 2014 describing it as “post-Snowden” web or even better a “Secure Social Operating System”.
This new Internet 3.0 will very likely be based on blockchain or another kind of distributed / decentralised technology. No one can be 100% sure if blockchain will be the silver bullet to bring us the internet as it should be. What I am sure of is that the internet as it shouldn’t be has turned the first page of its final chapter.
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