Looking at the current Social Media dominance battle between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, I find it difficult to understand why Some Social Media users are not seeing the main picture.
Over the years, Social media has always aimed to reward owners for the traffic users generate. There is nothing for an "average" user. The few people who were able to monetize their accounts were mostly influencers.
When Elon Musk took over Twitter, we thought we would see something different. People thought that he would make Twitter a home for everyone to monetize their content. This wasn't the case because the current tweet subscription feature is not inclusive; It is a one-way thing.
Users from low-tier countries, students, etc may not be able to subscribe to Twitter accounts that they would have loved to. Getting people to subscribe to their tweets won't come by easily as well.
In general, the current Twitter system favors a selected few; the well-to-do individuals. They are the ones that can pay for the blue tick. They are also the ones with higher chances of getting tweet subscriptions from users.
Facebook on its own is no different. It rewards a selected few as well. Its new social media app, Threads, will likely go in the same direction as the parent company; owner-focused in terms of monetization.
People get to market their products using these platforms but is this enough?
What about users who do not have products to market? Who is only there to share information, guides, consume other people's content, etc? What do they stand to gain?
A healthy social media platform should be a WIN-WIN thing for everyone. The ideology of social media being a place, "solely" for fun should cease to exist in our minds. We are in an era where artwork, articles, and videos are monetized.
Seeing people actively migrating to these social media platforms makes me ponder if they are not seeing all these deficiencies. Besides the fact that they do not offer a Win-win environment, the fact that they are centralized and censored should be another point to look into. Again, these are two wealthy individuals fighting to make more money for themselves using the public.
And when I consider that there are several SocialFi projects out there that are decentralized and with a monetization feature for all, it is difficult for me to understand the reason behind the preference towards these centralized platforms. The likes of Hive, Blurt, Torum, and many others have served as a home for many content creators. Students who are aware of such SocialFi platforms have left these centralized Social media platforms because there is nothing for them. They have been able to make money for themselves through their content while having the so-called "fun" that is used to describe social media.
I know we all have our preferences, but I believe it is time for us to look out for ourselves. It is time to look away primarily from the fun and see how we can generate money for ourselves while having fun as well. Centralization is limiting and owner-focused.
We should not just follow a trend without accessing the trends and how they will benefit us. Only a few of us consider the privacy involved in registering with all these centralized social media platforms. The rest are focused on the hype and being in line with trends.
We can keep helping the rich to be richer with our efforts or we can choose to look out for ourselves. We can choose to take control of our content through Decentralized Social Media platforms or we choose otherwise. We have the ball, whichever direction we kick it, depends on us.