voting with our wallets and…with our clicks

Someone once said that every time we make a purchase, we are choosing the type of world we would like to live in. In other words, we vote with our wallets.

It makes me wonder whether in our times we don’t do this with our clicks too (feel free to replace clicks with swipes, taps etc.).

Depending on whom you ask, it turns out that porn sites worldwide make up 4% - 12% of all websites (presumably, that’s why computer disks became hard disks, but I haven’t verified it in a trustable source). But one might be curious what’s the business model here since so much of it is free content, and yet they are [here you can insert a random digit, but make sure it’s astronomical] $ billion industry. A large part of it is a click-driven, intricate nexus of redirections to other websites and services (often subscription-based). It cashes in on our instincts and… clicks that follow.

But this text is not about porn, nor is it about my point of view on which websites or industries are better than others. Let’s take other, more neutral clickable examples like news portals, search engines, social media, email providers, online shopping services like Amazon. You name your clicks.

And perhaps something else that deserves a mention here is that I don’t even know what kind of “choice” are we making - is it any longer possible to operate in the digital world outside the ecosystem created by dominant tech behemoths, no matter what I might think about their values?

Still, what I want to say is this: I believe that every time I click on something, I magnify it a tiny bit. It becomes a little bigger for me and for the world to see. Every click is a vote for more of it.

But let’s relax, after all, one click will not change the world, just like one vote cannot. Or can it?

This post flows with Jens Lekman - Pocketful of Money