Decentralization is one of the best weapons against censorship and centralized control over public speech. With political tensions rising across the globe and many societies experiencing tumultuous times, it is necessary to have platforms that do not inhibit the freedom of expression and allow users to engage in policing-free discourse in various public and private spaces.
We are going to talk about some interesting solutions in the social media sector and how we, as a society, can build better spaces for free opinion expression and uncontrolled discourse with sensible limitations and healthy anonymity.
The poster child of the whole sector is the Meta corporation. While older versions of social media platforms existed before the creation of Facebook, it became the biggest and most used application in the world within a decade wiping the floor with competition. According to the latest data, Facebook has over 3.05 billion monthly active users while the corporation as a whole has over 3.96 billion users across all its four products.
X, formerly known as Twitter, Snapchat, and many other applications that are trying to compete against the giant are also huge platforms with hundreds of millions of users. Some of the most popular of them are created and managed by centralized corporations that have been scrutinized for their questionable business practices and potential collusions with a variety of governments in an effort to control public opinion.
While the information is unconfirmed, a variety of sources have accused the Meta corporation of working with the CIA and the POTUS administration throughout its existence. In 2004, news agencies reported that the Pentagon had an ambitious Lifelog program that was shut down in the same year. Supposedly, Facebook was an active part of the program intended to document what individuals posted, commented, or did in the online environment and in real life.The central control over public opinion is something that many people are not fine with. According to the Pew Research Center, over 73% of all US adults believe that social media websites censor political viewpoints with 90% of Republicans thinking so compared to just 59% of Democrats. Right-wing people tend to move away from traditional social media platforms and go to other places for political discourse.
Decentralization is a powerful tool when it is applied effectively. The growing Fediverse is an excellent example of a fully decentralized, federated network of social media hubs that have separate rules and guidelines while adopting the same technological foundation allowing users to effortlessly switch between instances and exploring a wide spectrum of opinions and discussions.
To have a fully decentralized environment, user data should be also handled in a way that allows for safe distribution and fractionalized storage. Such solutions exist but require more work to become something convenient and useful to the general public.
Here are some advantages that decentralization brings to the table:
Safety is a big concern for many internet users. According to Zipdo, 53% of adults had their personal data compromised due to a data breach while over 4 billion different records were stolen or exposed. Since the vast majority of centralized social media platforms require users to provide personal data and even verify it to receive some sort of perk, security vulnerabilities can have dramatic consequences for users.
In many ways, decentralized data handling can be a better way to set up a social media platform. However, security strongly depends on the quality of development. For example, AcivityPub, the most popular protocol in the Fediverse, had several safety failures that led to data leaks. In the world of blockchain, smart contract design can be insufficiently robust to provide protection from malicious actions.
Despite the negatives, the anonymity and safety provided by decentralization are still way better and more reliable than anything that centralized platforms can offer. Since many protocols are open-source, independent specialists and whole development teams can conduct code audits to ensure that it is free of bugs and exploits.
Several approaches to building such services exist in the contemporary internet landscape. Some of them have been around for decades. Let’s talk about some of them.
Throughout the last two decades, the Web 2.0 concept has been dominating the internet with all companies focusing on user-generated content for all sorts of purposes. However, the explosive growth of Meta, Google, WeChat, and many other corporations controlling the modern online discourse led to the disillusionment of many users with the Web 2.0 concept that allowed power-hungry individuals to take over and start censoring opinions.
The push toward decentralization became stronger during the 2016 presidential election in the US when the country became polarized with both sides accusing powerful online corporations of political censorship. Some saw an opportunity to build something resistant to censorship. Gab, Parler, and Minds became alternatives to Twitter and Instagram. The former is one of the most controversial social networks that was heavily criticized for the proliferation of far-right groups. Nevertheless, these platforms grew incredibly well throughout the last several years indicating a growing demand for such services.
There are several reasons why users flock to these social media services:
Blockchain is a peculiar technology as it is not novel or groundbreaking despite what many crypto enthusiasts are saying. However, it is a great tool for many developers to create systems that are trustless, permissionless, and complex. Social media platforms can operate on blockchain as proven by Steemit and some other applications. However, the problem is scalability.
ActivityHub has been heavily criticized for its vulnerability to accidental DDOS attacks that can occur if a post becomes truly viral with thousands of people trying to interact with it significantly slowing down the federating process.
Blockchain networks have similar issues with many existing architectures struggling to achieve high throughputs capable of enabling experiences similar to that of Facebook or Instagram. Decentralized data storage is another problem with many networks suffering from data loss or insufficient storage.
While these issues seem like deal-breakers to many potential users, the level of data integrity and security offered by blockchain architectures still attracts those who value privacy, data safety, and resistance to censorship.
Contemporary applications that want to use distributed networks can provide privacy and anonymity to users through a variety of techniques:
Since the vast majority of new users on these platforms come primarily to avoid censorship on other platforms, we want to focus on some of the social media applications that offer users the necessary level of freedom of expression to feel clear of oppressive central authorities. While many of the platforms in this category are built within the Fediverse, some are using blockchain technology.
Our main criteria are popularity, resistance to data tampering, relaxed content policing, and true decentralization or a strong trend toward it.
When it comes to websites that are resistant to data tampering and censorship, several interesting platforms come to mind:
The most reliable and secure networks are built using blockchain. We have several interesting projects that you should check out if you are interested in decentralized social media:
Sapien is a social media news website that offers a higher level of transparency, integrity, and data protection compared to many existing solutions in the market. The funders position the brand as a network state with multiple DAOs governing their parts of the ecosystem.
Since many contemporary protocols are trying to appeal to users of all demographics, it is quite easy to join a fully decentralized platform. For instance, Gab works just like your regular website where you can simply create a new account and login using personal credentials. Sapien is still in its beta phase with only selected users and DAOs participating in the testing of the ecosystem. However, you can easily join Steemit. If you plan to post here for rewards, creating a native wallet address is all you need to do on top of making a fresh account.
The traction these projects are getting in the current moment is still insufficient to talk about massive adoption. It is true that decentralized social media attract a certain type of people who are interested in freedom of expression, immutability of data, privacy, resistance to data tampering, etc. However, the general public is fine with using centrally owned and controlled platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.
Simultaneously, a shift in dynamics is happening in the internet as a whole with some large platforms announcing that they are moving toward decentralization by adopting protocols like ActivityHub. For instance, such plans were expressed by Threads, Snapchat, and some others.
It seems that content creators are positioned to benefit from this paradigm shift the most. Steemit and Verasity demonstrate that it is possible to create ecosystems where rewards are distributed evenly and fairly while the amount is determined by unique mechanisms allowing platforms to confirm engagement. In such environments, everyone can become a creator making content that generates revenue.
At the same time, many creators feel less restricted in terms of how they can express themselves when working on platforms like Gab. The issue is that content policing is still a thing even in spaces that are supposedly free of such supervision. For instance, Parler was heavily criticized for having strict guidelines that often feel even more limiting than those on Facebook or YouTube.
We strongly believe that decentralization is an important alternative path for social media websites. There is no way for them to replace existing legacy platforms that have cemented themselves as market leaders. However, the niche these decentralized social media applications are carving can be incredibly useful to those who respect the freedom of expression and want to have spaces that do not have censorship or questionable guidelines.
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