Talk:Stefania Diaz - Social Capital vs Financial Capital: do users consider Web 2.0 interactions "Free Labour"/@comment-27077344-20151028065938

Since you have stated that you plan to conduct a qualitative research study on the topic of whether people care about their "social capital" being used as a means to generate economic capital, I'll tell you personally that it does bother me and it is somewhat unfair. However, let's keep in mind that these online platforms like Facebook and Twitter aren't holding a gun to our head. It's our choice to post content on their page, and it just so happens that the terms and agreements for using their platform is that they can use our content in the context of that highlighted agreement. If an individual feels as though they are being robbed by these conglomerate corporations that opperate these platforms, go ahead and find an alternative route to communicating with your friends which doesn't compromise your content and ownership of it. But if you don't, tough luck. In the future, I feel that some tech savvy individuals will eventually setup their own social media websites that does not take advantage of people's content as a way to earn a profit. Will these websites become popular? Probably not, and that's how it has to be. The moment a website becomes super popular and corporations offer large sums of money in exchange for data and advertisement placements, many greedy website owners will succumb and accept the offer. One great thing about technology and it's exponential improvments in terms of speed and capacity; websites are increasingly becoming cheaper to opperate and own. This means that we'll eventually have owners of social media websites that can opperate a website and not rely on corporations to fund it. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this happens..

Your welcome :)