How Blockchain Will Save Social Media
What can we learn from the Facebook fiasco.
The Facebook Fiasco.
Some say it was just a matter of time. Others, such as Tim Cook, say this shouldn’t even have been possible in the first place and call for tighter privacy regulations.
“The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life — from my own point of view, it shouldn’t exist.”
— Tim Cook
In 2014, Facebook‘s loose policies permitted any app to collect data from users (who opted-in) and those users’ friends (who didn’t opt-in). Although this practice is no longer possible, Facebook realized its mistakes too late. This carelessness with user privacy was exploited by a British firm, called “Cambridge Analytica”, to retrieve some 50 million Facebook user profiles. With this data, it was possible to create “psychographic” profiles to target advertising towards specific belief groups with the goal to evoke a change in behavior. This particular case was especially alarming because as it turned out, this tactic was used for mass customized propaganda in order to influence the 2016 Brexit campaign as well as the 2016 US elections.
The backlash against Facebook is immense. The FTC has opened investigations, calls for tighter regulations have mounted, and Facebook’s stock is down about 15% since news of the data scandal surfaced. The most interesting thing, however, is that Facebook’s security has never been compromised and the data breach wasn’t really a data breach. A terminology Facebook is very sensitive about. So much so that their Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, had to delete his tweets where he referred to the incident as a “data breach” and has announced that he is leaving the company in August.
This controversy “reveals almost nothing about the social network or its data policies that wasn’t already widely known” (as Will Oremus from Slate puts it). However, this issue has started a healthy debate about the practice of user data-based services.
This Is Facebook.
“I have more fear in my life that we aren’t going to maximize the opportunity that we have than that we mess something up”
— Mark Zuckerberg
Because the reality is that this kind of data hoarding and mass customized targeting is exactly what built Facebook’s empire. They pioneered and mastered the exploitation of personal user data. Today, most users have become accustomed to giving up their privacy in exchange for free online services. The same happens when you log onto Twitter, LinkedIn or Tinder, where similar carelessness could lead to a comparable disaster.
The question that is now coming up is whether such user data- and ad-based business models are the only way to go for social networks. It seems that in the race to making users a profitable asset, this kind of data hoarding has gotten out of hand. It is undoubtedly controversial for a for-profit company to gather information, not just about people’s interests and demographics, but also about their SMS and phone conversations and their durations.
Now, more and more people delete their Facebook accounts, most famously Elon Musk with his SpaceX and Tesla pages. People are actively looking for alternatives, so much so that the servers of a privacy centric app called Vero crashed due to the large amount of new users that signed up.
If Zuckerberg Started Facebook Today, Would He Do It On Blockchain?
Maybe initially Facebook did not intend to turn into this giant data behemoth. Back in 2004, there just wasn’t an efficient alternative and the growing pressure from its shareholders to make a profit led to the increasing exploitation of its users’ personal information. Today, however, Facebook’s greatest asset may turn out to be their heaviest burden. It seems that Zuckerberg already sensed that, when he was writing his annual new year’s post. After admitting Facebook makes “too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools”, he mentions decentralization and cryptocurrencies as a potential way forward.
”One of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. Like cryptocurrencies that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands.“
— Mark Zuckerberg
Are we already in the midst of a paradigm shift? Blockchain technology with its decentralizing force holds the potential to truly revolutionize social and economic processes. A number of startups have thus made it their mission to address some of social media’s most pressing issues using blockchain. Content platforms like Steemit, Indorse, or InkDrop emerged with the goal to offer a decentralized alternative to today’s centralized social media corporations.
By storing personal data on the decentralized blockchain (not on private servers), every user is in complete control over it and how it spreads across the internet. The need for advertisers and the collection of personal data could be eliminated entirely and users would get back the ownership over their online identities. Similarly, blockchain technology empowers the user through more transparent information, user privacy, increased security, censorship resistance, and enhanced utility.
Decentralization would thus effectively break up the high concentration of power we see today and enable new ways to govern networks. Networks previously run by a single corporation can now be governed by anyone with merit to the network. Merit being a commitment of work that advances the network as a whole. This work is denominated by a currency (i.e. crypto tokens) and depends on what the blockchain needs. Bitcoin needs work to secure the ledger and Ethereum needs work to execute and verify computation. For a decentralized social network work can mean creating quality content, curate content for others, or help to fight trolling and misuse of the platform.
InkDrop, for example, is a microblogging network designed around the Ether cryptocurrency. Ether can be exchanged like a “Like”, enabling users to express themselves in richer ways and have more meaningful interaction. Valuable work that advances the network as a whole is determined by a novel protocol called Proof-of-Care. It generates incentives for users to create and promote great content and penalize negative network behavior (like trolling) themselves. The idealistic vision of InkDrop is to build a healthy decentralized ecosystem that regulates itself and shares the value with the ones that create it.
The Future Of Social Media.
Maybe a social network was never supposed to become a multi-billion dollar corporation that uses all its engineering power to engineer its users’ attention. All with the single goal to improve their conversion rates and make a profit for their shareholders.
It is still unclear how the standard model for a social network will look like in the future. Yet, with each data breach or privacy fiasco, it becomes more obvious that the user data- and ad-based services will not prevail. Storing personally identifiable data on private servers will most probably be considered an immense liability.
With blockchain, we now have the means to use the Internet as a tool to truly decentralize power. Just how it was meant to be used. Although the technology is still in its infancy, more and more people from all over the world are getting behind it. And as it is with every technological revolution, the move to decentralization will be gradual. Yet, it is pleasing to see that the wheels have been set in motion.
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