Published On: Mon, Oct 11th, 2021

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

It doesn’t matter how old you are or the country you live in, if you have internet access, you’re definitely among the  4.48   billion people who are on a social network, whether it’s for selling, buying, talking to friends and family, or just staying informed. The most recent research suggests that the number of social media users worldwide equates to more than 70 percent of the global eligible population. And that’s great, since these apps have made our lives more practical and dynamic; the problem occurs when users get addicted and the apps start to dictate what happens in real life.

Conversations inside and outside of the virtual world are based on what is read on these platforms, but what many do not know is that the news that appears to me, for example, is different from those that appear to you; as well as ads and offers. All this is determined by the analyses made by the experts based on the profile of each individual. That is, the holders of these networks continue to create and improve the mechanisms of attraction, so that they have full control over their users. And they do this, aiming only for profit.

And that’s the whole point. When a company has as its main objective to be a monopoly and get rich off of it, its values are lost and it’s capable of doing anything to achieve its goals; however, the only thing that can stop it is people. People like  Katharine Gun who in 2003 leaked a secret document and exposed the war plans in Iraq; Edward Snowden in 2014 denounced the U.S. spying scheme using servers from companies like Google, Apple and Facebook; and now, in the last week, Frances Haugen, facebook’s   former civic integrity manager, who revealed how the platform’s activities design its algorithm to attract children and teens, and    put young people’s mental health at risk.

That is, these people put their lives and careers at risk to alert the public to what is happening behind the seemingly innocent platforms we use daily. They do this because of a clear discontent with the philosophy of the companies in which they got to know in detail. This seven-hour paralysis of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp was not a domain name system (DNS) failure, nor a hacker attack, this was the beginning of an internal boycott and perhaps even a take-over of these platforms. 

While some choose to give up what they have achieved, their careers, in exchange for  warning the public; others prefer to  support subtly, helping to create a large-scale boycott and therefore compare the size of the damage of paralysing these platforms with the attack in a magnitude similar to the attack of September 11, but this time in the digital world. 

On September 11, about 3,278 people died, and the damage caused a loss of $ 60 billion in the U.S. With this breakdown in virtual platforms, 3.5 billion people were affected, and the loss to the private company was US$ 47.3 billion. Not to mention the damage to small business owners who generate their source of income through ads and sales on these social networks; and people who couldn’t communicate, to call for help using Whatsapp for example, like the case of the driver who was held hostage for almost 8 hours in Pernambuco city in Brazil because the thieves couldn’t talk to anyone,  for example.

I guess the message was loud and clear, don’t you?

About Wanderson Castilho: CEO of Enetsec and expert in cybercrime and lie detection, the only Brazilian certified by the U.S. Institute for Body Analysis Training in cybercrime, is one of the most highly rated experts in solving major cybercrimes around the world. The expert is a member of the Academic, Industrial and Cyber Defense Network Advisory Board of Michigan, University of Michigan, USA and is a consultant to the Commission on Electronic Rights and High Technology Crimes of OAB/SP and is able to uncover the virtual behavior of the individual, such as the way of writing, of referring to people,  among other features and traces online and left by criminals in crimes involving financial losses, theft and sale of data, Fake News, hacker attacks and defamation. Learn more at:  www.enetsec.com

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