Over past few decades we have been pouring information into the internet. Stories of our lives, making purchases, filling out forms, and so on. Many of us expect to purchase everything online, renew our documentation online, , and when we can’t it seems odd. We are experience data breaches, surprises about how our data is being used, being shared with and so on. The result is a mixture of enjoying the ease of access to information and convenience of online shopping with the frustration of feeling powerless in comparison to Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.

The strange thing is, many of us are jealous of the tech giants. Perhaps less so as individuals and more so organisationally. The social sector hasn’t escaped this either. Not only do we seem to seek ‘one system to rule them all’ or seek to own ‘the connecting data layer.’ But we also want to keep the data to ourselves. We do not appear too interested in enabling the people about whom the data is, to have access to it.

Maybe it will be different in 5 years, but it could be different now. If we don’t like how Facebook treats our data, perhaps we shouldn’t use their business model then. We don’t have to copy them. We don’t need to replicate their bad behaviour; their bad business models. There are other options.

The choice is up to us.

Photo by NeONBRAND