“My Generation” section about social network monopolies: WhatsApp stories are just the beginning

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I was eleven when my parents gave me my first cell phone. IPhone 4, used, silver. A lot of people already had one, and now I’m finally one of the cool ones too. For those who don’t need to call their home phone “to make arrangements,” but can chat.

My first step was to download WhatsApp. “Allie takes advantage of it!” – they assured me. In fact, a new world has opened up to me. Overactive group chats, chain letters that threaten me with 77 years of bad luck for not forwarding them to 77 contacts, and my favorite feature: status.

The standard back then was: “Hi! “I use WhatsApp” and can be modified to inform others of current availability (e.g. “can’t make calls”).

My first status was “Alesya is easy 😜” (including spelling errors) and every day it became more and more colorful. My friends and I would use statuses to keep up with what was going on in our lives (“meeeega, cool, gsi hüt! Shop at Tivoli with the best!”) or try to use a flower to let our fans know that we were interested. At some point we also realized that this is not what status is about and that WhatsApp is actually just a chatting app.

But then something amazing happened. WhatsApp itself no longer wanted to be just a communication app. So they started introducing more and more features that had little to do with texts. An example is stories that disappear after 24 hours and are often used by distant relatives to exchange flowerbeds or funny sayings. There are now channels you can subscribe to. For example, Blick has it, as well as Netflix (over 19 million subscriptions) and FC Barcelona (over 12 million).

Why is this happening? Because media companies like Meta (which includes Facebook as well as Whatsapp) or X (formerly Twitter) are currently in the process of creating monopolies in social media. So not only are their CEOs fighting each other in the boxing ring, but the companies are also competing to see who can be the first to create an app that includes all the important features at once. Such an application already exists in China – it is created on the basis of the Chinese analogue of WhatsApp called Wechat. Today the app is used for all digital interactions, including payments!

But monopolies also pose dangers: data protection is at (even greater) risk, and programming algorithms by one person can lead to influence on users. In addition, people who do not want to use the app may be excluded from social life, as is already the case in China.

I’m not a big fan of this venture. However, I am almost sure that something similar will happen to us. I wonder how we will deal with this? Or as I would have written in my status in 2012: “Who’s ready for a super app?!”

Noah Dibbeysi (22 years old) studies social sciences at the University of Bern. She writes to Blick every other Friday.

Source: Blick