Social Media Mining Emphasizes the Importance of Data Safeguarding – Taking a Closer Look at Signal & HUH Token
It’s standard practice when signing up to any social media site or newsletter to provide your name, email address and mobile number. It’s something we don’t think twice about – after all, how could an email address possibly be weaponized?
Facebook, now Meta, went from a college student’s project to an $86 billion corporate giant due to our own willingness to put personal information online for ‘social networking’ purposes – whatever that means. It made publicising social data like our birthday, hobbies and relationship status feel fun, in which we got to assert our own sense of self-importance. Putting yourself online felt alarmingly risk-free until last decade, whereby the Facebook – Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal highlighted how companies had been utilizing this information to fuel political campaigns, notably, the 2016 US Presidential Election. The scandal is considered partially responsible for Donald Trump’s presidential victory as well as Brexit.
Ultimately, the scandal helped us realize the power of data on a mass scale. The more that is known about our habits and preferences, the more we can be manipulated into acting in the interests of a select few. Upon this discovery, encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram and Signal have surged in popularity. Facebook-owned competitor, WhatsApp, is attempting to slow the rate of platform migration via advertising that emphasises the encrypted nature of WhatsApp messages. Likewise, following traction, Signal recently ventured into the cryptosphere by integrating MobileCoin so users can send and receive “privacy-focussed payments”, the ease of which they liken to texting.
Social media mining is a highly controversial yet legal practice that means through processes such as cooking profiling, our data is passed onto third parties who go on to bombard us with advertising based on what we’ve looked at or searched for. They are essential for raising companies’ profits and mean we’re liable to buying things we don’t need. Moreover, cookies erode our personal choice – websites tend to deny access to them unless we consent to their cookies. So, is the solution for social media to become decentralized?
Subsequent to HUH Token’s successful December launch leading to a 6000% price jump and being added to platforms UniSwap and SushiSwap, the utimeme aims to create a decentralized metaverse in which we gain from the data we generate. The idea is somewhat reminiscent of Brittany Kaiser’s #OwnYourData campaign which appealed for greater data transparency.
According to the White Paper, HUH are working towards releasing the MetHUH, a two-tier platform for both content production and consumption. The utimeme is planning on incorporating sentiment analysis which rewards sentiment tokens that can then be traded for HUH tokens. Although little is currently known on what to expect from the MetHUH, hundreds of influencers are rumoured to begin promoting HUH on January 19th. It’s expected that this move will cause thousands to flock to HUH in anticipation of their upcoming social platform.
Society is already undergoing a transition from CeFi to DeFi. As we benefit from crypto granting us more autonomy and control over our finances, it wouldn’t be surprising if social media takes the next leap into DeFi.
Learn more about HUH Token here:
Website: https://huh.social
HUH Official Swap- https://swap.huh.social/
Telegram: https://t.me/HUHTOKEN
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HuhToken
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/huhToken/