People these days have a fascination with Apps. Apps are a daily part out lives. Some can’t even function as a normal human being without logging into their favorite Apps. Although Apps have their relevancy in today’s Society, we have become too comfortable with dealing with the Third Party.

When I was younger, we would head down to the local Basketball Court to run some street ball. We would play against some players that were there or scrimmage amongst each other. When there would be an issue of foul, or any other type of infraction, we as civilized people would come to a conclusion amongst ourselves. The spectators would act somewhat of a Jury in case we needed to make sure that things were going according to the rules of the game. There was no referee.

In these days and times, everything is regulated by a Third Party. The Third Party calls all the shots. We have become so addicted to what an App can do for us, we forgot that the App is supposed to be there to enhance what we should be otherwise doing for ourselves. The APPLE craze is what catapulted our addiction to Apps that don’t necessarily make our lives any better. You can’t blame me though, am still a Blackberry user!!

There is nothing technically wrong with Apps. We use Apps to write blogs, edit videos, and read the world affairs. The problems with Apps is the fact that, in order to use some, they require access to Personal data on your device. Whether it be your contacts, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, or even your camera, the App will not function unless it has access to certain data. For the most part, the App requires this connection because Apps are used to mine data. This data is then used to send advertisements to your phone. This is how most App developers get paid. The App market is ultra-competitive where about 0.01% of Apps actually generate real revenue. This means 1 App out of 10,000 is successful (Study from 2018). 60% of App developers earn under the poverty line making less than $500 a month.

Being such an important factor in our daily lives, the creation of this content is no more than the new Sweatshop in the modern era. It makes you ask yourself, do we really need this in our lives when it is ruining lives? Desperation leads to corruption as we would see both in real life and in the movies.

In the movie JOHN Q. (2002), a desperate father took health care workers hostage in an E.R. because his insurance didn’t cover the cost of the surgery to save his son’s life. In MONEY MONSTER (2016), a man held a TV show Host hostage after he lost all of his money from investment advice given to him and his viewers.

What is lacking in these situation is the ability to ‘self-govern’. The referee’s (The App) job is to call the game. In other words, it is there to mediate. It is not supposed to dictate what happens on the Court, but to make the rules are being followed among the Users. We complain when we don’t like the calls, and claim a variety of unfairness. Earlier this year, TWITTER decided they were gonna censor users with certain views they claim violate their Terms of Service. There was a major uproar. People were not asking the correct questions when it came to this controversy. They would ask, “why would they prevent me from saying how I feel on the platform?” when they should be asking, “Why are we allowing it?”