Have Social Media Platforms today really stayed true to their core objective?

Once upon a time, Social Media platforms brought the people across the globe closer. We really started going “Global” not just professionally but personally as well. More people started knowing about more ‘unknown’ people and the sharing of cultures spread across the world more rapidly than ever. The top 10 Social Media platforms or Social Networks saw a Golden Age and an opportunity to serve the Global Citizens. I am deliberately not going to name any platform in particular in this article. But as a tech entrepreneur and founder of a tech company Kunsh Technologies, who started using these platforms and also aim to build one someday, I have thought a lot about where it all started and where its heading.

Each time, when I think of an idea and try to get inspiration from some of the most popular platforms, I wonder; have all these platforms today stayed to their core objective when they formed these amazing platforms? Are they still true to their intentions and visions? No doubt, these platforms have evolved over the years in a great manner and are offering some extremely advanced ways to use and technologies to integrate. No doubt, these platforms offer way more than where they started. However, in the race of offering more and more and overwhelming their users with so much of information and data (not to forget, the same data and user experiences are their Gold Mines for targeted ads, data analytics and many more things) have they really deviated from their true path?

An X platform was supposed to connect people to share ideas, socialize and bring them closer. It has now been used more to spread useless content and many times ‘misused’ to spread hate, terror and fake news. Although, they offer controls to users to make ‘public’ what they want and make ‘private’ what they want, but realistically, they have lost control over the ‘content’ being posted on their platform. They need 1000s of people and bots to curate the content manually and it’s still not enough to trace and control the content millions of users post each second. The platform which was meant to be constructive, socially helpful and collaborative, I personally feel, has been reduced to junk / spam machine. Unwanted ads, images, videos and trash are being dumped, shared and re-shared all the time.

A certain Y platform was supposed to be something that would connect professionals. Sadly, it has too, to certain extent, reduced to sharing content that not “professionally” useful. Slowly, the Professional Networking platform is getting reduced to a mix of job board and social platform where there is no control on the content being shared.

With my opinions I don’t mean that these platforms and their creators are going wrong or no longer deserve to be called the greatest in the industry. In fact, they are truly revolutionary in what they have done for the world and for the good of the world. However, it’s a combined responsibility of the Users and Platforms to keep the platform true to its objective. Alas, not everyone understands. I feel, sometimes, its not a good idea to overwhelm users with more than what they need or more than what the platform is originally meant to offer. If the technological and feature advancement are made in the only direction of core objective rather than so called “value added” features and functionalities, probably these platforms will be much more useful as they were once.

I also believe, that these race of using “Data” as so called new ‘oil’ or ‘gold’ or some precious commodity by these Platform owners, and for that matter, all the Tech Companies who uses ‘Data’ has to draw a line. Just because Users have agreed to let them share and use the ‘Data’, you have to be really cautious to the amount you can use. It’s a fact that most of the digital / tech companies are using the User Data at maximum possible extent and not ‘optimum’.

On an ending note, I really feel, the Social Media Platforms and Networks will have to understand that its wise and ethical to keep their platforms in control especially about the content and must do ‘mindful’ use of the User Data. Sometimes ‘overwhelming’ is not good. People might hate taking back some of those ‘extra’ features but later will surely understand that it was for good. And for the new and upcoming creators of social platforms, hope that they will keep their platforms true to their core objective.

Let’s keep and make the Social Platforms really ‘Social’!