Nearly every social network we are on is “free,” but only in the sense that we are not charged to use them. The price that networks like Facebook, Google Plus, and Instagram extract from us is our personal information, which is sold to advertisers. Although in reality Facebook only makes 20 cents per user per month in profits, the valuable personal information they get from us is sold off in the aggregate. Sites like Facebook also use a proprietary, ever-changing algorithm that shapes what newsfeed we see and more, manipulating our attention in favor of advertisers instead of letting us connect with who we want to (although it is interesting to note a new Pew Research survey revealed that 61% of Millennials get their political news from Facebook).
Would you be willing to pay a little bit every month to use these networks and not have your information collected? Some experts are proposing such a solution. It might be interesting to be treated like a customer whose preferences and privacy matter for once and not worry about being tracked. Maybe that’s something to hope for in hypothetical Internet 5.0?