The coveted digital metapower
To what extent would you give up your privacy for the sake of national security or to preserve the stability of your nation in the face of a threat of any kind? The vortex of social networks in the Information Society - advancing at a rapid pace - has somehow exposed us all to a kind of Big Brother.
It is increasingly difficult for us to abstain from participating, but it is also difficult to get out of this digital bubble in which any comment, action or reaction leaves a trail that, although it is often insisted that it is necessary to legislate for the right to be forgotten, it is certainly not easy to embrace it.
The Digital Age is like a comet with a trail of chiaroscuro in which we find both good and bad things; positive and negative aspects that Humanity will have to deal with and get used to.
For example, Facebook made it possible for millions of people to meet so many others that they knew throughout their lives: classmates from the neighbourhood, from the school generation; university graduates, sentimental couples and, of course, it brought together families that had not seen each other for a long time or had not even met because they were unaware of their blood ties.
The shocking thing is that, like so many other social networks, they allow anonymity, which is good for people who falsely profile themselves to insult, coerce, bully, harass, defraud and commit other misdeeds such as paedophilia, sexual harassment or cyberbullying. Networks are good for psychopaths.
According to the latest report by Internet Trends, by 2017, 51% of the world's population had access to the Internet, out of a total of 7.7 billion human beings.
People are talking less and less on the phone, but instead they are messaging more on the various social networks available. In fact, acquiring more smartphones is correlated with having a better mobile device with greater capacity to download sites such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook; and so on.
An extremely interesting fact is how YouTube and videos on Facebook or live transmissions via the various social networks that allow it have displaced the use of traditional television; for example, in the United States, smartphone usage "surpassed the time dedicated to TV" with an average of 226 minutes per day.
"Africa and the Middle East together account for 13% of global internet users, with a penetration of 32%. The percentage of internet access is increasing in the Latin America and Caribbean (62%) and North America (89%) regions," according to the published analysis.
Between 2020 and 2025 (this forecast was made before the pandemic) the volume of new data was expected to increase by up to 32%.
Most likely, the landscape has changed by accelerating interconnectivity because teleworking, the virtual classroom and the need for alternative information on social networks in many homes has left traditional radio and television stations offline for longer.
According to this report, in 2018, in the American Union, mobile phone use averaged 6.3 hours per day in internet consumption, above all.
Further interesting facts: 30% of time is consumed on Facebook; 27% on YouTube and 25% on WhatsApp; the potential is enormous, and whereas the media was recently referred to as the fourth power, the digital age is the metapower.
It implies a manna which, under control, could be a potential social weapon to frighten the population under the pretext of preserving social or national security. That is why I ask you, dear reader, would you give up your privacy on social networks to receive messages from the government alerting you to an emergency or a threat? Spain has a draft law to do so.
The intention is for all messaging platforms to take advantage of the obligations that telephone operators already have to transmit public alerts to citizens in the event of major disasters or imminent emergencies; the Spanish government justifies that it will not violate people's privacy... I cannot imagine such a regulation in the hands of dictators or satraps.