Centralized Social Media and the Share Generation: You don’t own your content or your account.

I read an article by @tarazkp today, in which he mentioned a new name “the Share Generation” This caught my attention because I want to Share something with that generation; centralized social media like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are wonderful products and they have been great vehicles for some content creators to achieve wealth. But you don’t own your content or your account.

I want to share with the “Share Generation” my concerns about posting your content on platforms where you can suddenly be banned, your content taken down and recently you could find yourself locked out of your social media account.

My Story; my daughter had an account on Instagram from High School through College and her first few years after graduation. This account and it’s pictures were a photographic record of several years of her life. Recently she discovered someone had started a new Account in her name. Literally my daughters full name and they were using her pictures from her Instagram account. It seemed ridiculous and caused confusion amongst her friends and her students who followed her on Instagram.
She wrote this person and asked them to stop impersonating her. This person then reported my daughter to Instagram. Then Instagram froze both accounts, investigated the situation and then deleted both accounts stating they couldn’t figure out who the owner was....

Unfortunately for my daughter, over four years of photos were instantly lost. Instagram gave her no warning and those photographic memories appear to be lost forever.
It was a harsh lesson that she didn’t own the content she posted on Instagram or her Instagram account, even though it was in her name and the pictures were of her, her friends, her school, her job and her travel experiences for over four years. My daughter was upset, sad and frustrated over this illogical outcome. Instagram played the part of the heartless central entity perfectly.
They appeared to not care at all.

This story along with recent stories of YouTube content creators being locked out of their accounts or other reports of cryptocurrency content being removed in mass from platforms like Facebook and now YouTube serve to remind us that in centralized systems individuals have no rights to their content or even their accounts.

It is an extrapolation of the No Keys No Crypto, if you don’t have the private Keys controlling you’re Crypto you don’t control your Crypto. If you don’t control the private keys to your social media account you don’t own your content or your account.

The time for decentralized social media is now. It’s time for the Share Generation and other generations of content producers to rise up and take control of their content and their social media accounts.

✍️ written by Shortsegments

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