Imagine a future where everything you do online yields some monetary value. Where your whole “self” is being uploaded, almost like virtual reality or a videogame. If you’re the type of the person that loves science fiction, you will definitely think that Nimses is a step closer to the future like The Matrix or Ready Player One.
So, Nimses…
It’s a social platform from Ukraine, backed by an American company located in Delaware. Before throwing Nimses into the same category as Facebook, let me tell you more about what makes Nimses different than other social media platforms.
Nimses is based purely around an in-app currency named “Nim”. For every minute you spend in the app you get rewarded with 1 Nim. This isn’t the first time we’re seeing this concept as it’s been used my plethora of other apps and videogames.
However, Nimses pushes this idea even further by giving the in-app currency a real-life value. This means that you will be able to use your Nims to buy your next pair of shoes or a PC component.
Currently, this is limited to only several shops but if the app gets more popular the range of Nim-accepted businesses will probably increase. Taking that they paid the world’s most popular YouTuber to promote them, we can tell for sure that they have big plans ahead. As PewDiePie himself has mentioned, the actual concept behind Nimses is very interesting and innovative. For the first time, you can earn money by doing what you do anyway, use social media.
Each post will cost you 100 Nims, each like will cost you Nims as well. You can earn Nims by having your posts liked, by becoming more and more popular. The more you’re popular the more Nims you will earn from all the likes and influence that you as an individual have.
All this sounds perfect until you start wondering where all that monetary value for Nims comes from – money can’t just be made up.
Well, you probably guessed it, Nimses sells your private data to corporations. This is nothing new since, as PewDiePie mentioned in his video, most social media companies do that anyway. Again there is a catch… if you were given most of the money that your private data earns that wouldn’t really be a bad thing for people who don’t care about their privacy. Sadly, to shatter your dreams, one Nim costs about $0.001. To be clear, no money is worth your loss of that much privacy.
This brings us to the second problem of the Nimses. In the future where everyone uses Nimses, as Nims are earned 1 per minute, the value of one Nim will eventually drop from its starting value. This means that the cost of your privacy will become lower and lower to the point where it’s worthless.
What private data are we talking about, you’re wondering?
Well, from the moment you download the app, your phone is being tracked and all the data about your profile is public to the people 1 mile around you. So it’s not only the company that knows your information, but also other users. Taking that you write in your legal info such as your birth date directly and that you post photos alongside with other sensitive data to Nimses, you as a personality are under attack as nothing you do is private anymore.
In comparison to Facebook, which also tracks your movement, you don’t have the option to disable the tracking on Nimses. To be more precise, privacy settings on Nimses are scarce and close to non-existent.
Many people have followed PewDiePie’s video with criticism after downloading the app and seeing that you can’t even delete your own profile. In order to delete your profile, you have to contact the Nimses staff to have it removed from Nimses database. Many people have criticized the app and warned many others not to download it or to make an account.
What’s especially dangerous with Nimses, in comparison to other social media platforms, is that it promises a reward. In the world where everyone is looking for a way to make easy money, Nimses is a tool that will prove to be most efficient for harvesting user-data.
Nimses also has many harmless features that will make many people want to stick around such as the thrill to always compete with others in popularity and nim-count. Seeding your location, events, moods, and variety of other sensitive information is put to a whole new level with Nimses.
Nimses-style platforms could ultimately end up being the social media platform of the future, or at least the first in a line of the apps that will mark the new era of social networks – especially if we, as users, don’t demand more privacy from developers. Mining your data seems to be the primary focus on Nimses.
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