Social Platforms Are Getting an Update Thanks to New Data Privacy Laws

According to investigators, the world largest social media platform allowed users' data to be harvested illegally and sold to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm whose use of this data is still being investigated.

Following the scandal, an international conversation sparked about the necessity for personal data privacy and security.

The law, which came into effect a month ago, requires all businesses operating within the European Union and in the European Economic Area to get consent from data owners before using their data.

Some of the rights granted by the law to individual data owners include the right to be informed when their data is used, the right to data erasure after the specified purpose is met and the right to request the restriction or suppression of their personal data.

These stipulations indicate the end to the traditional social media model where profit is made by exploiting user's data and selling it to advertisers.

Thus, for the traditional social media giants to survive, they must adopt a strategy that encourages users' to share their data while ensuring a high-level data security.

Without the middlemen, data owners are able to make a significant income from their data while the advertisers are able to save on costs.

Centralized social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter act as intermediaries between data owners and businesses, offering little value to the latter and imposing huge advertising costs on the former.

The distributed nature of the technology ensures high-level transparency which means that social media platform users' can trace where and how their data is utilized.

While the traditional social media companies may perceive blockchain as a threat, it is truly an advantage when seen from the data security perspective.