Most content and offerings on the internet are completely unfastened for customers: email, social networks, news portals… Yet have you ever idea ‘why’? Maybe you pay without spending a dime on internet content material, a tremendous deal more than you could imagine.
The ghost of “free.”
Facebook, Google, news internet site – this is a simplified model of most internet users’ regular itinerary. This path is loose and truly secure: you circulate nearly mechanically from one vacation spot to another. But what might appear if, at some point, you visited your preferred (free!) news portal and discovered that you couldn’t read a single article? Instead, you will be requested to pay to enter the materials. Your first-class walk would be spoiled.
“Why, for God’s sake, so I must pay for it?” – many users would exclaim. “Why can I use Google or Facebook completely unfastened? Who do the editors assume they are, asking me for money?” Many human beings assume that people who paint in such large organizations, like Google or Facebook, are passionately devoted and enthusiastic volunteers who ordinarily sacrifice themselves in the name of “the consumer-orientated internet.” Well, numbers talk louder than phrases: in 2014, Facebook’s profit turned into 12 billion greenbacks, and Google – even more, 66 billion bucks. Do you continue to agree with the “consumer-orientated net” mission?
Our news portals can barely imagine such sums. “Not my troubles, sorry” – a regular, delivered up using the miracles of the unfastened net consumer could country. “The reality that there are folks who examine their portal is already a massive success for them”. Such logic proves that customers do not recognize that they’re involved in the system of capital accumulation – and on this “recreation,” their role is unenviable. As a reminder of truth, the internet isn’t an area wherein everyone is equal; however, it is a hierarchical pyramid governed by those at the top.
The Internet Pyramid
Google and Facebook (there are tons more of them) are examples of “those on the pinnacle.” They create the ghost of “loose.” “So, what is incorrect with it?” – one extra possible query. Paradoxically, mt’s, however, the root of the problem is that the whole lot is (at the start sight) free.
To show yourself that “the whole thing is unfastened” is a petty illusion; you may wonder how those “free” services get so much money. The rule is simple: if you do not pay, someone else does. This someone isn’t always a generous daddy, equipped to deliver his final cent, so you ought to scroll through your information feed on Facebook or locate where to spend your evening on Google. This any person is… Advertising.
To clean it up, if the websites dictate the regulations from the pinnacle of the pyramid, marketing is its proprietor who creates those regulations. Were you searching out the region to have dinner? Awesome! Google will offer you a gaggle of romantic venues so that you might ask for certain information about what you have been searching for.
Is that everyone? Sure, it isn’t always: the following time you scroll through your news feed, you may (wonder-surprise!) stumble into the photographs of the vicinity you have visited, sending you quite a linear message: revisit us! Alternatively, you can see the pix of different locations, implying that it’s far high time you went someplace out. It is the primary trap of “the phantasm of loose” – you’re tracked, and your private information is used without your permission.
The 2D trap is even more risky – probably you do not recognize that now, but you are a method to produce capital for websites placed at the pinnacle of the pyramid. Yes, nobody pays yours for that. The stolen statistics are used to steal your interest – and it’s miles of advertising and marketing that does it.
Ads are anywhere: on your private web page, on your news feed, in serps, even in your electronic mail – no person warned you about it, and no person requested whether you permit to apply your private details for such purposes. Google and Facebook made this decision on your behalf and half of thousands of other human beings: nicely, men, we offer our services without spending a dime; we forget about your attention and get our billions for that. It’s as simple as ABC.