In 2009, Laconica changed its name to StatusNet. Nothing particularly special happened during this small alteration in branding. However, the decision by the developers was quite logical as it was a service that allowed users to change their status messages to share their thoughts. StatusNet was one of the first iterations of an emerging concept inspired, partially, by the success of blockchain technology.
The idea behind Laconica was simple: users can share their ideas on a microblogging open-source platform where data is stored in a decentralized manner with nodes maintaining the completeness of the system. Unlike web 2.0 websites focused on aggregating user-created content on centralized servers, companies like Laconica were trying to implement a different system free from centralized ownership of content.
More than 15 years later, we live in a world that definitely could use alternatives to currently existing social media platforms. In the US, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey revealing that 72% of Americans strongly believe that apps like Facebook and Instagram are censoring political views and engaging in hidden debate moderation. The percentage is much higher among conservatives (over 90%).
While US citizens are mostly guessing whether their government and powerful CEOs influence social media platforms to censor politically sensitive content, we definitely know that heavy moderation is used in authoritarian states like China, North Korea, Russia, and many others. The degree to which governments interfere in public political discourse varies, but we know for certain that it happens a lot.
For example, researchers Yun Tai and King-wa Fu from Tamkang University and the University of Hong Kong respectively analyzed 2,290 pairs of WeChat articles on various topics including international trade. They found that there is a certain algorithm that detects words and expressions that should be banned. As a result, articles that do not use them avoid banning. This particular study shows that the Chinese government is using automated censorship systems.
One of the hottest debates around the topic of centralized Web 2.0 websites is about a human right recognized since, at the very least, the 6th century BC. Athenians believed that thoughts and ideas should be spread and shared without any resistance from power-bearing individuals or institutions. Despite the term explicitly mentioning speech, the contemporary legal definition includes all forms of expression in the human rights description covering art, music, text, and other mediums.
Even in countries with a strong emphasis on the freedom of expression, enforcing this particular law can be challenging. The existence of privately owned corporations that control virtual public spaces makes it close to impossible to prove that they are tampering with content or maliciously censoring information. However, with both sides of the political spectrum largely agreeing that there is something suspicious going on with platforms like Twitter (X), Facebook, or Instagram, we can conclude that content is being manipulated to at least some degree.
Decentralized social networks solve the issue by implementing technologies that prevent data tampering as all information is immutable and the content is stored on independent nodes that can always verify the data integrity. Many technological platforms like Mastodon are using the open-source approach to allow enthusiasts to contribute to the development process or conduct external audits to ensure that everything is fair and transparent.
One of the most popular architectures used by modern developers is the Fediverse which is a congregation of compatible social networks using the same foundation allowing users to freely interact within the ecosystem regardless of which shard they support. Each separate entity within the federated community has its own rules, policies, and features, but users still can roam between them. The aforementioned Mastodon is merely a part of a much more expansive decentralized environment.
Since each node is operated independently, the data remains verifiable and immutable as it must be approved by the whole Fediverse. Separate platforms within this space are called instances. Today, most of the popular social media sites in this sector like Gab or X are already using the recommended ActivityPub protocol with several other giants like Tumblr and Threads promising to soon implement it too.
ActivityPub alone does not prevent individual nodes from tampering with data, but it is much harder to do so due to the sharding of information stored across multiple devices.
Some experts argue that the implementation of blockchain-like systems that can create tamper-proof content storage is the best path for the sector of social media if it wants to retain trust and loyalty from users. Simultaneously, many believe that the UX/UI and addictive properties of contemporary platforms will make it impossible for the next generation of platforms to catch up to already existing giants like Meta and Google.
Below are some of the reasons many specialists strongly support decentralization in social media:
Democratic governance. The implementation of blockchain technology can be a great way to introduce true public governance of social media spaces. Decentralized autonomous organizations are excellent examples of setups where power belongs to enthusiastic members of the community. While centralization of power is still possible in such designs, they are still way more resistant to takeovers. Messari published a report claiming that 54% of all users participated in voting at least once indicating a high rate of involvement.
Despite the best efforts from developers and enthusiastic communities, we are still far away from having a competitive environment in the social media landscape dominated by corporations like Meta, Google, Twitter, and many others. The Fediverse has a tiny share of the market despite having a multitude of interconnected projects with thousands of daily active users.
Below are some reasons why we are still lagging behind:
These challenges are incredibly hard to overcome due to the inherent design flaws of popular protocols. For example, ActivityPub simply cannot solve its scalability problem. A hugely popular post on one of the instances can cause an accidental DDOS attack by congesting all available threads. Other problems must find their solutions too for the industry to move forward.
The issue of privacy is, probably, the most important in the discourse surrounding social media. Traditional platforms have downsides that can be summarized thusly:
In theory, these issues can be addressed by the implementation of decentralized databases with independently federated user interactions. We do not have a clear solution right now with different Dapps in the Fediverse focusing on proposing new ways of handling privacy issues without compromising the integrity of their operations.
Many technologies based on using decentralized systems are still quite young and demand more public testing. The adoption rate is slow which is, honestly, good since we’re still struggling with scalability. The demand for such services is there, but they must become easier to use and more efficient in the near future.
The absence of meaningful improvements worries developers and users. The hype can quickly die down without new advancements. For example, Mastodon enjoyed a massive spike in user count by the end of 2023 reaching 2.5 million. However, by January 2024, this number dropped to just 1.8 million. Similar patterns were observed in other parts of the Fediverse.
The potential for growth and user retention is here, but we definitely won’t see a massive exodus on established platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Political events and the change in social sentiment may also influence the sector in a positive way.
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