How Myriad Will Democratize Social Media Advertising
An environment that prioritizes content creators, and incentivizes talent
The current social media advertising system is undermining user privacy.
Most US citizens believe that social media has had a bad influence on the current situation — and it’s not surprising. Social media corporations have been involved in a lot of controversies over the years, but none was more eye-opening than Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. In 2015, the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested the profiles of 87 million Facebook users through their external app, Business Insider reported.
The data, originally harvested for research purposes, then began to be used for targeted political campaigns in 2016 for both the US Trump Presidential campaign and the Brexit campaign running up to the EU referendum. The scandals shine a different light on social media and the current practice of targeted ads.
Stop With the Targeted Ads
Targeted ads have arguably become one of the most destructive forms of advertising. They’ve been the reason behind the relentless data mining on social media because targeted ads are fueled by the continuous influx of user data. Advertising companies have always been trying to increase their campaign effectiveness, but the only thing they lack is data. Being able to target ads effectively to people’s needs is every advertiser’s dream.
Moreover, the increase in digital advertising revenue has skyrocketed over the years. In the last decade, digital advertising revenue has increased six-fold, while the non-digital advertising revenue halved.
Digital advertising is here to stay, but targeted ads shouldn’t be. Even though it increases effectiveness in some aspects, there are ethical implications that can’t be ignored. Forbes reported that most consumers view targeted ads as unethical. The methods of how companies are harvesting data because of voluntary user consent are not ethical.
Targeted ads require significant amounts of user data to determine the personality of each user, further targeting their perceived interests and needs. But the methods used by companies to gather such data are opaque, and it brings up the question of whether it is ethical to collect sensitive data from users at all.
How Myriad Will Democratize Social Media Advertising
Even though social media advertisements are the staple of the digital advertising industry, they shouldn’t be exempt from bad practices. The goal of social media is to get users to interact more within their platform, preferably using algorithms to serve personalized content meant to trigger user curiosity. This practice is manipulative at best and it preys on the users through their choice and their ignorance.
Should modern solutions to advertisements be this way? Should social media prey on their users — using their data against them? Myriad aims to answer these tough questions with our solution. Myriad is developing the next-generation social media platform to solve the issues of social media today, and unlike most modern social platforms, Myriad does not condone the use of personalized algorithms.
Decentralizing social media advertising
Myriad is developing features previously unseen in decentralized social media platforms, such as the ability to monetize content and allow users sovereignty over the advertisers on their social page. Users on Myriad will not be subject to a centralized monetizing system controlled by big tech executives.
For instance, YouTube’s advertiser-friendly content guideline has received sharp criticism from both liberals and conservatives, condemning YouTube of bias. No one seems to be happy with how the current social media execs are handling their platforms. But there is nothing anyone can legally do to stop this, social media companies are private spaces, thus private companies are not required to follow government laws that protect freedom of speech.
The main goal of the decentralized social media advertising scheme is to allow users to get the most out of their content without being afraid of being demonetized by a centralized authority. And because Myriad is decentralized, it prevents power from being aggregated in any single entity. In Myriad, you don’t have to worry about having your content censored because the platform prioritizes content creators over advertisers.
Imagine the idea of being able to make a living with the most amount of creative freedom possible — that is Myriad.
Decentralization also gives the benefit of sovereignty on a community scale. One of the main issues with big tech social media today is that some standards enforced on the platforms do not reflect the current issues faced in society. Big social platforms tend to conform to the whim of their advertisers because they are typically a main source of revenue.
How decentralized advertising works
Decentralized ads do not rely on the platform itself, rather they rely on a one-to-one relationship between the advertisers and the content creator. The content creator is responsible for the ad spaces on their page and will be able to vet what kind of advertisements they want to allow.
This model implicitly enforces quality control on both the content and the advertisements. On the one hand, it removes the middle man by directly connecting the content creator to the advertiser, creating pressure for the content creator to keep churning out great and marketable content.
On the other hand, because it is known that the content creators are fully responsible for the ads, content creators will quality check each new ad on their platform to prevent their reputation from dipping. Similarly, advertisers will have to follow standards established by content creators thus increasing the quality of advertisements in the space.
This concept is revolutionary in the way that it enforces transparency and accountability for all the players involved — and it doesn’t require artificial intelligence to unilaterally deem what’s monetizable.
Anonymous cross-platform monitoring and interaction through tipping
Among the revolutionary features that distinguish Myriad, one of the most incentivizing is cross-platform interaction and monetization through user tipping. The problem with current decentralized social media applications is that the pioneers have a hard time generating views because most people haven’t signed up for the service yet.
Take Mastodon, for example. Mastodon is a decentralized microblogging platform similar in terms of features to Twitter. Mastodon was created in 2016 and has only a fraction of users compared to Twitter. There needs to be a seamless user migration scheme for users to even consider moving.
In Myriad, new users will not have to worry about missing content from their favorite creators on other platforms because Myriad will have an anonymous content monitoring system. Users will be able to import content from their favorite creators into Myriad and still be able to enjoy the experience from other platforms whilst benefiting from our better privacy features.
Myriad will also allow content creators from all supported platforms to be able to receive tips for their content, even if they haven’t made a Myriad account. Currently, the only social media platforms supported are Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. The concept is simple, in Myriad, each user will be able to tip using the $MYRIA token, and every user on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit will have a unique wallet address hashed from their profiles.
Each user who wants to send tips to content creators from other platforms will be able to do so but to redeem tips, the content creators must first create a Myriad account. Why? Because the content creators must prove they are the original owner of the account by posting a generated message on their profiles.
Myriad isn’t naive enough to assume that users will automatically flock to it because of our features alone and does not intend to be just “another decentralized alternative” to social media.
For Myriad this is only the beginning. The dream of an internet where we can express ourselves freely is still on the horizon. All Myriad needs is support from the community to remedy the current social media chaos we are experiencing today.
Even though the goal of Myriad may appear idealistic, the opportunity to secure the way we communicate and reshape the way we view relationships, users and communities are currently in our hands.
Join us on this journey of experiment and discovery as we demonstrate the creation of a social internet beyond the reach of undue influence. The world is ready for us!
