Dark Social

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Dark Social , in German for “secret social [network]”, sometimes also “ dark traffic ” (secret data traffic), is a term that was created in 2012 and describes the data traffic on websites from untraceable, unmeasurable sources . Traditionally, such sources are classic emails or instant messengers such as WhatsApp . With the increasing spread of mobile apps without referrers and the https standard , however, there are now several causes for high access rates without traceable origin and, according to critics, they cannot be attributed to instant messengers alone.

Origin and Consequences

Significance for site operators

The term comes from Alexis C. Madrigal, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic . He described the idea behind the term in the post "Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong". The main thesis of this is that the importance of (public) social networks such as Facebook or Twitter is massively overestimated and the majority of shared links would be sent via non-visible services such as e-mail and instant messengers. On the contrary, the latter would have enormous significance, in 2012 a good 56 percent of all page views of The Atlantic came from such non-measurable sources. The origin of the article is that there were and are very high page views for individual articles with very long web addresses on The Atlantic website that could not be assigned to any source. a. would use the https instead of the http standard .

A direct consequence of this is that it would be much more difficult for website operators to place targeted advertising or monetize the content . This also makes the targeted alignment and development of content more difficult. Madrigal also makes it clear that this also has an impact on the users of social networks: If they had previously believed that they had to give private data in exchange for a “social network”, the Internet would be much more “social” apart from these platforms, in private chats and messages “,“ Narrower ”than expected. Social networks are therefore primarily there for recording social interactions. While users would not necessarily click on all the links on Facebook etc., the click rate in messengers would be much higher.

Social relevance

While Madrigal mainly described the consequences for site operators, the term has also been viewed more in a social context since 2017/18. In contrast to the public platforms of the social networks, posts and links in closed chat groups - via e-mail or instant messenger - can have an enormously much greater social and thus political impact. A central reason for this lies in the credibility of the sender, who is considered a "verifier" for contributions, even if the contributions themselves do not differ from publicly shared contributions ( e.g. memes ). In several events in 2018 - the emergence of the “yellow vests” movement in France, outbreaks of violence in India and Jair Bolsonaro's election victory in Brazil - chat groups that are not open to the public are said to have played a major role. Dirk von Gehlen expects this phenomenon - and with it the meaning of "Dark Social" - to become considerably more important (and more political) in 2019.

discussion

According to the magazine Business Insider, in 2014 at least 15 percent (with an upward tendency) of the visits to the online offer of The Guardian had no source reference (referrer), in the German edition of BuzzFeed this proportion is between 20 and 30 percent. Whether these calls really came from the so-called "Dark Social" is questionable. Among other things, according to the author, numerous Android apps (including the Facebook app) do not use a referrer, and since Edward Snowden's revelations, the spread of the https standard, which also prevents tracing, has increased massively. The use of search engines like DuckDuckGo , which would not issue a referrer, would also increase. Other media confirmed the increasing share of links via (inter alia) WhatsApp, however.

Niklas Hofmann of the Süddeutsche Zeitung Online again cites reports according to which the traffic from e-mail sources is falling massively and (2012) only half of the 12 to 17 year olds use instant messengers.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Alexis C. Madrigal: Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong. In: The Atlantic. October 12, 2012, accessed November 22, 2014 .
  2. ↑ a b Caspar C. Mierau: Leitmotiv 015: About digital sweets, Switzerland, childhood in the GDR, dark social and Getting On - with Juliane Leopold. In: Podcast series "Leitmotiv". November 2014, accessed November 22, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Ryan Broderick / Jules Darmanin: The "Yellow Jackets" Riots In France Are What Happens When Facebook Gets Involved With Local News. In: Buzzfeed News. December 6, 2018, accessed January 9, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Timothy McLaughlin: How WhatsApp Fuels Fake News and Violence in India. In: Wired.com. 2018, accessed on January 9, 2019 .
  5. ^ Matheus Magenta, Juliana Gragnani and Felipe Souza: How WhatsApp is being abused in Brazil's elections. In: BBC.com. October 24, 2018, accessed January 9, 2019 .
  6. ↑ What social media experts expect from 2019. In: Jörgen Camrath. January 8, 2019, accessed on January 9, 2019 (German).
  7. ↑ Jim Edwards: The Guardian Is Being Swamped With 'Dark Traffic' And No One Knows Where It's Coming From. In: Business Insider. November 3, 2014, accessed November 22, 2014 .
  8. ^ Ricardo Bilton: WhatsApp emerges as big share driver for publishers. In: Digiday. May 30, 2014, accessed November 22, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Niklas Hofmann: Dispute about the real giants of the Internet. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online. October 22, 2012, accessed November 22, 2014 .