Abstract

Jaron Lanier, renowned computer scientist who is credited to coin the term “virtual reality”, empathically states that persons must beware of digital lock-in. According to him “The brittle character of maturing computer programs can cause digital designs to get frozen into place by a process called lock-in. This happens when many software programs are designed to work with an existing one. The process of significantly changing software in a situation in which a lot of other software is dependent on it is the hardest thing to do. So it almost never happens.” Thus, Lanier also contends that “lock-in… is an absolute tyrant in the digital world.” This paper contends that the ubiquitous, and also seemingly indispensable, Facebook, has locked-in its users. From its creation in 2004 by Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has become a monolith with a global 1.2- billion-plus strong members at present. A monolith, which, has been showing signs that it is becoming a runaway “absolute tyrant in the digital world.”