Putting social media on the chopping block(chain)

What is blockchain? What’s the Ethereum blockchain? What for that matter is a decentralized platform, and where do cryptocurrencies fit into the picture?

Want the good news — you don’t need to know. Not the underlying detail, not if you don’t want to. Instead, concern yourself with what it could mean for you — and certainly what you can get up to on social media: what it means for your personal data, for monetising your activities, your attention, your engagement with advertising etc.

The importance of control

So let’s talk detail. Blockchain, according to the venerable Wikipedia, is a ‘decentralized and distributed digital ledger’. Ethereum blockchain is an ‘open source, public, blockchain-based, distributed computing platform featuring smart contract functionality’.

Distributed and decentralized.

As opposed to today’s centralized platforms, like, well everybody: Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, WeChat, and many others beside. Centralized platforms where actual control of the day-to-day is concentrated in the hands of the platform owner — even if the true value of these sites is user generated content that sits outside of a centralized sphere of influence.

The question of course is why is this important?

Well, put simply, this concerns your digital identity. The value attached to it, how it’s being exploited, monetized, shared, and controlled. It’s about understanding the limitations of the existing, centralized model, and how we’re seeing these unfold before our very eyes:

· Where our private data is now being used against us, in terms of the advertising we find encroaching on the user experience

· With the insights now available to ‘others’ (be they advertisers, companies or governments etc.) on our preferences, behaviours, habits, connections — even locations

· As well as the increased censorship being applied to the content we’re ‘allowed’ to receive

· Alongside the growing sense of a top-down agenda emerging from the political stances adopted by these platforms — and the resulting manipulation (i.e. fake news) people are waking up to

These issues (and many more to boot) are the price we pay for allowing (or at least not stopping) centralized ownership of the world’s social media platforms. This is the problem, the challenge, and the dilemma. But what’s the answer?

Promoting a decentralized agenda

Decentralization is as much a philosophy as it is a capability. It’s about giving control back to users, and enabling them to make decisions about where, when, and how their personal data is used — how the groups they belong to are regulated, moderated, and developed.

And with such control come rewards: for using the platform and being an active participant; for agreeing to consume advertising (having set levels for frequency and volume); for providing feedback to the advertisers themselves; and for receiving a greater share of the revenues generated by content (think video etc.) that users create and share.

Rewards that require a mechanism for sharing them, in the form of a cryptotoken that’s recognized by all leading cryptocurrency exchanges (so they can be easily and quickly turned into a fiat currency), and can thus flow across international borders without government intrusion.

What’s more, it’s all built on blockchain meaning all information used to create new ‘blocks’ must be approved by the entire chain — making it truly secure, transparent, and (most importantly) validated.

As a result, all information (your information) that’s contained on the blockchain is private. That means all messages sent between users, all the data being sent, received, and stored, as well as all transactions within the network, are kept confidential. Secret, hush hush, and away from prying eyes. That alone is worth the effort of getting involved, and trust me it’s going to get even more important in the not too distant future.

Building a new marketplace

Plus (and it’s a big plus), by removing centralized control, you also remove the ability of any one entity to enforce their agenda on what you’re allowed to see — and to monitor and control user-generated content. When I say users are in control, they really are, with the platform designed to enforce privacy and security through its decentralized make-up — as well as supporting and encouraging freedom of speech (account metadata is spread across a huge computing infrastructure etc.).

Finally, to touch again on payments, a decentralized social network with attached cryptotoken, can also act as a next generation online marketplace. Entrepreneurs, group members, content producers etc. (as well as advertisers) are left free to offer their innovations, products, and services to the groups and communities they belong to, and to complete transactions free from the complexities of exchange rates and money transfer — with smart contracts on hand to regulate agreed timescales for payment and product/ service provision.

This is the social media we’d hoped the mainstream players would provide given enough incentive and stimulation.

This is the power of blockchain to put the user in a position of proactive control.

This is social media 2.0.

This is Howdoo.

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