It is impossible to answer the question of why social networks are needed in one word. This is due to the fact that they have too many different functions. Among them are entertaining, social, communicative, educational, advertising, informational, etc. All of them cannot be counted, so everyone can find something that will interest him in any site.
However, the initial idea of creating social networks was to isolate a person in every possible way from loneliness, surround him with the care and attention of virtual friends and relatives who are at a great distance and get to know others. Social networks provide an opportunity to greatly expand the circle of communication. You can meet and communicate with people from different countries and continents. Find an interlocutor for communication "on interests". That's what social media is good for.
Social networks are also very convenient in that all contacts are collected in one place, and in a short period you can find out news about all your friends and tell about yourself. You can search for the necessary information and like-minded people, provide assistance in professional activities. There is also a bunch of additional entertainment, such as - video, music, games. You can listen and watch them, or upload your creations. Earnings. There are many ways to become a popular blogger by creating all sorts of content on social networks.
The benefits of social networks are also in the educational sphere. There are a bunch of publics dedicated to science, creativity, history, etc., which the user can purposefully study, or accidentally find some useful information.
In general, the benefits of social networks are undeniable. And it is clear that the present and the future are and will remain theirs.
But after all, in addition to the benefits and many advantages, there is also a reverse side of the network. It becomes easier for fraudsters to get hold of data, thanks to the information indicated in profiles. It is enough to mark your geolocation several times or sign the name of your pet under his photo, and now someone will know some code word or number of your house. In addition, despite the lack of censorship, there can also be offenses on social networks due to this or that content. If you write or do something questionable, then you should think about whether they can put you in jail for like, repost, comment, etc.
And users have long been deprived of the opportunity to choose content on their own - algorithms are involved in the formation of a smart news feed. Their main task is to keep the user inside the social network. After all, the more time a person spent in an application or on a website, the more ads he saw.
The scale of what information social networks collect about users for the sake of advertising, the world realized only in 2018. Then Facebook was convicted of leaking data of 87 million users by the British company Cambridge Analytica, which is engaged in influencing user behavior on social networks. The resulting information Cambridge Analytica sold to third parties, including political headquarters.
After the information about the leak became public, Facebook management had to disclose what exactly they know about each user. The list of data turned out to be gigantic: many had the feeling that social networks store literally every sneeze on servers. The list of monitored data includes contacts, SMS history, call log, camera usage, disk file names and types, installed applications, website purchases, mouse movement, battery level, free disk space.
The social network also collected data on the nearest Wi-Fi points and cell towers (and you can track a person on them), data on mobile operators, read information from smart TVs. In addition, metadata about all photos (such as when and where they were taken) are saved. And this is only the part that the developers revealed.
There is only one way to fight the influence of social networks - to become free. But how can this be done? The new decentralized social network Solcial, which will be based on the openness of information, the absence of censorship within reasonable limits and fair remuneration. All personal data and content is stored on the computers of all network users. Network management is shared by multiple network nodes that share responsibilities equally and run the same software. The information stored in such a network cannot be replaced or corrected, because it is stored on many computers at once, and the performance of the system cannot be affected by any single person. We can be sure that we manage our data ourselves and decide whether to advertise it or not.
To conclude, social media has both a bright side and a dark side. On the one hand, they bring us closer, make our life easier, and on the other hand, they replace many moments of real life for us. What to do and what to do in social networks is the choice of everyone. But it will be very good if you take only the good from social networks, weeding out all the bad! And Solcial will help us with this.
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