Incidents

July 4 and 5 will be a world-wide social media strike: Wikipedia

According to personal data protection specialists, Dr. Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s founders, is inviting the people to stop using any social media platform for up to 48 hours in an attempt to pressure companies to grant control of personal data to users.

Sanger has mentioned that his movement would
“reaffirm mass demand, the need to change the way social media platforms
manage personal data”. The strike is scheduled for this weekend, on July 4
and 5. Movement participants should avoid using any social media platform
during these two days.

“We will bring big changes; by
demonstrating in bulk we will require the large and manipulative technology
companies to give us back control of our confidential information, which will
significantly improve the online privacy experience of users”, says the
doctor Sanger.

Personal data protection experts are not yet
clear about the actual scope of Sanger’s calling, although the Wikipedia
founder believes that this movement will truly show discontent with the
tracking, collection and storage activities of data carried out by social media
platforms.

This movement demands that social networks be
decentralized, becoming an environment that respects freedom of expression, as
well as the right to privacy and online security. Finally, the founder of
Wikipedia extolled his desire to drive interoperability between platforms:
“this is how social media should have been designed since their beginning,
rather than simply becoming an environment where it dominated competition
between the different platforms,” Sanger added.

Specialists in personal data protection from
the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) mention that the call has
found some reception on platforms such as Reddit
and Twitter, among others. Because it does not have profiles or fanpages on Facebook,
Sanger has been unable to actively communicate his message through Mark
Zuckerberg’s company. While many still doubt that this movement will have a
noticeable impact on the use of social media worldwide, Sange says he will not
lower his arms until these platforms modify their practices to empower the
user.

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