Possible Improvements Made by Blockchain Technology to Traditional Social Media:
dealing with fake news and centralization problems
Insights and abstract
In the previous SciEcon Medium articles about blockchain social media, the authors talked about three typical paradigms: Steemit, Bihu, and Voice, from the perspective of business briefings, business model analysis, and the token mechanism. Each of these blockchain-based social media platforms has its own characteristics and different pros and cons, but I still hope to find some commonalities from successful operation paradigms to prove that the application of blockchain technology in social media is a good choice.
At present, with the rapid development of Internet information technology, social media and their large amount of information is showing explosive growth. Based on existing forecasts, in terms of the market size, social media will “grow with a CAGR of 32% from 94.83B USD in 2020 to 308.96B USD by 2025”. (LeewayHertz) At the same time, traditional social media has been utilized as a tool to spread fake news and misinformation, which brings with it other issues such as private security and information authenticity. For example, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people spread misinformation about the virus on social media platforms, which caused “negative impacts on the conversation about COVID-19 all over the world”. (Sharma) Therefore, blockchain technology has been considered for social media platforms, since “decentralized social networks are needed” by users and they are more user-friendly by rendering much more security. (LeewayHertz) It is foreseeable that the application of blockchain technology may trigger a new round of reform in the social media industry. This paper aims to summarize some drawbacks of traditional social media and explore how blockchain technology can be used as a tool to curb the spread of fake news and personal privacy as well as regulate and hold people accountable for these social problems. At the end of the paper, a case study is used to explore the feasibility of applying blockchain technology to the current social media industry.
Background of traditional social media
Business operation/engagement model of traditional social media
Social media refers to virtual networks or communities that “allows relationship forming between users from distinct backgrounds, resulting in a tenacious social structure” (Kapoor et al. 2017). The business model of traditional social media is to attract more people by offering services to users for free. In return, everything shared by all users on a social platform and the personal information they use to set up their accounts become the property of the platform owner (Guidi 2021). In this model, values are co-created by the organization and users through joint activities of users’ “contributing, retrieving, and exploring content with other users via a social media platform developed by this organization”(Gangi and Wasko 2016). Traditional social media also gains from advertising engagement. (Voorveld et al. 2018) Social media platforms provide an environment for advertising, and advertisers also bring benefits to the operators of social media platforms.
Drawbacks
| Fake news and Information traceability problem
For social media platforms, the authenticity of news or information is a long-term problem that can affect the whole society. On these platforms, where the speed, scope, and impact of information dissemination are significantly amplified, distorted, inaccurate, or fake news clearly has greater potential to have a huge impact on millions of users in a short period of time. The purpose of spreading fake news also varies. Some are simply trying to mislead the public, while others are trying to utilize distorted information for large-scale political effect (Dhall et al. 2022). For example, Facebook was under scrutiny for spreading false news and creating social unrest on its platform during the 2016 US election (Figueira and Oliveira 2017). All in all, fake news is a serious problem faced by all social media platforms.
Another big problem concerning fake news faced by traditional social media is the inability to trace the source of misinformation and limit its spread. A traditional social media platform does not allow the ability to trace back a piece of information back to its source. Authenticity is determined only through coherence with other sources. Some platforms, which do not require users to use their real names, cannot track the source of information, which makes it easy to cause serious social problems such as the abuse of the platform by bad people and the rampant spread of false information.
Tracking the spread of fake news on a fast-moving social platform can be difficult. Even when the source of the false information is traced, it is hard to get any closer to identifying the culprit, since users who spread fake news are likely to close their accounts and create new ones. At the same time, how to hold fake news accountable for further modification is also a big test. It is worth considering whether the disseminator of fake news should be held as responsible as the original publisher.
| Highly centralization and privacy issues
Centralization refers to “the extent to which authority and decision making lies at the top of a hierarchy” (ScienceDirect 2004). In traditional social media platforms, there is often a core development group to manage the platform, which leads to the centralization of the entire social network. Today, the most popular social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are all centrally run by big tech companies. Because of their centralized structure, they can make their own rules and exercise their own power to achieve various goals: for example, by selling user data to advertisers for additional profits. For this reason, although social media is theoretically free to use, you need to use your personal information for exchange (Subsocial 2021).
In a centralized system, the operational costs are evidently high, which is reflected in the central management team’s timely response to the problems of infrastructure failure, slow network speed, and insufficient database storage capacity in the face of the ever-expanding user group and the rapid growth of information content. Most centralized management groups are looking for a way to recoup these costs, primarily by “selling accumulated user data to product advertisers and other data ‘analysts.’ ” (Masinde and Graffi 2020) Therefore, when the core group is involved in user privacy disclosure and other problematic issues, the consequences are very serious and difficult to control. Cases such as Facebook’s infamous user data leakage case with Cambridge Analytica, are making traditional social media platforms increasingly at the risk of cyber attacks.
Censorship is also a critical issue on centralized social media platforms. Because of the increased power of authority, social media platform providers can easily delete the posts, restrict the content, and ban users who share different views with them (Subsocial 2021).
Blockchain technology
Blockchain is currently one of the most revolutionary and disruptive, promising technologies. It is managed by a cluster of computers and consists of a series of sequential blocks of transactions. The records are stored in a linear chain. Blockchain is characterized by “consensus, distributed computation, immutability, and authentication”. We can think of the blockchain as “a decentralized, traceable chain of messages exchanged”, particularly for forwarded messages, used by tracking the actual originators of those trying to spread misinformation or fake news. Blockchain has a more robust layer of filtering mechanisms that allow information to spread only if it follows a consensus mechanism, thus reducing the possibility of fake or undesirable information spreading. (Guidi 2021)
Traceability
Traceability is the ability to trace the whole history of any information. It helps to monitor any attempts to modify the data and ensures the integrity of the data. Any users who maliciously tamper with data or spread false information will be tracked down, which will greatly reduce the likelihood of information crime.
Blockchain traceability provides a system independent of authorities, regulations, or global data providers. In this traceability system, each product of the user is assigned a unique identity and the data displayed by this identity is transmitted to the space. Each user with the view and forward permission can see the data shared by that user and integrate it into their own system for use. All provided data is secure, immutable, transparent, and distributed. (VISIOTT 2021) In this case, blockchain traceability improves the transparency and accuracy of the entire trace and can also help improve efficiency. At the same time, while limiting exploitation, blockchain can also help “ensure auditable asset tracking”. (Geroni)
Decentralization
In the blockchain, decentralization means “the transfer of control and decision-making from a centralized entity to a distributed network”. (AWS) There is no possibility of a central agency deliberately leaking private information. Raw data information on social media platforms is stored in the cloud in an encrypted way, while blockchain stores only information about transactions. Therefore, the user’s privacy security is well guaranteed. At the same time, even recipients of decentralized authorization can access the most original data with permission.
Accountability
The data on the blockchain is theoretically unmanageable, which means, the blockchain keeps a record of any changes to the data, even if the user wishes to delete the information without malicious intent, it cannot be completely deleted. Therefore, developers suggest that another data structure should be formed in the framework to mark the deleted data or messages instead of physically deleting them.
Fault Tolerance
Since a blockchain is a distributed ledger, any authorized recipient owns an equal number of copies of the ledgers as the original publisher. Therefore, when any party has data leakage or loss, it can identify the problem and recover the data through consensus At the same time, data leakage can also be examined by monitoring the equivalence of duplicate ledgers owned by other data recipients. (Dhall et al. 2022)
Blockchain-based social media
The traditional social media sector is always innovating to attract more attention, from “virtual reality music videos to CGI in blockbuster films to video game streaming”. However, traditional social media still have their shared hurdles, like “digital piracy, inaccurate royalty distributions, fraudulent content, and erroneous data”(Daley 2019). Since blockchain technology has the potential to deal with these issues, there is a lot of interest in using blockchain as an underlying network or an upper-level tool for social media services. In fact, blockchain technology has already been applied to some social media platforms, such as Mediachain, Steemit, Binded, Sapien Network, and so on. (Daley 2019) Every year, the number and user usage of blockchain-based social media is rising dramatically.
There are some common features of blockchain-based social media, which can help address some issues in traditional social media:
For dealing with users’ privacy issues and centralization problem
| About data generation and storage
Blockchain social media is a decentralized network. It has no central authority to collect and store data. Users’ private information is encrypted and stored in a decentralized blockchain cloud. As part of the network, users have control over the data they generate. Blockchain’s powerful authentication and encryption processes make data breaches almost impossible. Users have great control over private data and published content, as well as determining the visibility and transmissibility of content to the audience. With a private key, a user can initiate a transaction and store it in a data block. Only “after being verified by the majority consensus of other network members” can this block be added to the whole chain, which guarantees that the private data is “accessible only to the intended recipient”. (LeewayHertz)
| About censorship and democratized governance
How to establish a reasonable censorship system is one of the most important issues in social media. Decentralized blockchain networks provide users with a strong degree of independence. Users can have more control over their own data and can set up their own information audit mechanism.
| Potential Challenges
Decentralized user identity management does, to some extent, remove the reliance on third parties as intermediaries for the storage and use of identity data, giving users ultimate control over their data. However, this management mechanism has certain requirements for users. Users must have valid identity information. But in fact, more than a billion people around the world currently lack valid identity information. They are excluded from even basic social and business services, let alone being able to obtain personal identity authentication on blockchain social media platforms (Kubach et al. 2020). Besides, this management mechanism requires users’ self-custodian of their own identity, which only works well for those well-educated people.
For dealing with the fake news problem
| About originality and authenticity
To address the issue of fake news, social media platforms need to judge the authenticity of the news and trace the source of the fake news. This involves both the originality and authenticity of data on blockchain social media platforms.
Blockchain-based social media can trace back to the original publisher of the news as well as every step of the information dissemination process through the blockchain traceability system. A Blockchain-based Timestamping can record any data, mark its creation time or date, and be viewed entirely transparently if desired. (LifeHash) Therefore, news senders and receivers are able to see the original publisher of this information and any party’s tampering with it during transmission. In this way, the source of fake news can be easily traced, and it is possible to restrain users from maliciously tampering with information.
Judging the integrity and authenticity of the content on blockchain social media is much more difficult. There is no good consensus on how to solve this problem. Many types of research have been carried out based on this problem, and many frameworks have been put forward to solve this issue. Qayyum et al. (2019) try to distinguish whether the news coming from news agencies is trustworthy or not. They put forward a news blockchain that maintains news integrity. News posted by multiple agencies will be identified using semantic similarity with the news that is already on the blockchain. Hasan et al. (2019) try to detect fake and edited videos/pictures as well as trace the edited picture to the original source in their paper “Combating Deepfake Videos Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts”, with the aim of helping to prove the authenticity of digital media, especially videos with multiple versions. The original videos and related data are stored on a decentralized InterPlanetary File System. Viewers are allowed to share or edit these videos according to the conditions in an Ethereum-based smart contract, which contains video details including owner information. This means that any new versions will have the link to the original video, and the original video smart contract will also have a list of all the following videos. We can apply the same concept to the field of information in social media. If we utilize Hasan et. al (2019)’s concept, we can determine the authenticity of a piece of information by tracing it back to its source using blockchain; this would render fake news/misinformation useless and the truthfulness can be ensured. This is the main advantage that we can find in Hasan’s proposal as it is able to determine authenticity through the process of forking and tracing information back to its source using the blockchain.
Other features
| About business model and reward system
Blockchain social media can use different types of rewards for users based on their roles. Besides the traditional reward system that evaluates content posted by users using metrics such as audience love and audience share, the operation mode and reward mode of users on blockchain-based social media platforms are more flexible and diverse. For example, users can re-share other users’ original content to help them increase their popularity and earn curatorial rewards for themselves (Guidi 2021).
Literature review
In this section, I will review two basic construction platforms for several blockchain social media: Ethereum and Internet Computer.
Ethereum-Based Social Networks
Ethereum is a platform or a “community-built technology” (Ethereum) that offers a variety of modules for users to build applications. It uses ETH (Ether) to pay the transaction fees. Users can build and run decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum. On these application platforms, developers can issue their new crypto assets, known as Ethereum tokens.
Ethereum uses its crucial innovation “smart contracts” to establish the arrangement terms between any two parties. Smart contracts can automatically execute when the terms are met without knowing the exact participating parties and without the need for an intermediary. (coinbase)
Internet Computer-Based Social Networks
Internet Computer is a utility token that “allows users to participate in and govern the Internet Computer blockchain network”. (coinbase) It uses Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) to permit global independent data centers to combine together and offer a decentralized internet cloud. It also uses ICP tokens to reward well-behaved participants and to pay making transaction fees.
The current Internet is centralized and owns closed sources. Internet Computer hopes to offer an alternative so that users can build, host, and run applications in a more decentralized way — “allowing websites to be deployed directly onto the public internet”. Furthermore, Internet Computer encourages “open source and transparent software development”. (coinbase)
Case study
Sapien Network
Sapien Network is an American decentralized social news company based in Fremont, California. It uses the ERC20 technical standard for the platform’s proprietary utility token, SPN. The Sapien Network users are rewarded with SPN for “posting high-quality content, commenting and upvoting posts, or through other activities on the platform”. (Ibrahim Ludwick 2018) Sapien Network was co-founded in 2017 by two University of California Berkeley students, Ankit Bhatia and Robert Giometti. They created Sapien Network based on the concerns about users’ data privacy (Lynn 2018) and the network is built on Ethereum, a blockchain-based computing platform, which guarantees that the data is distributed among everyone. (InvestInBlockchain 2018)
The First-mover Advantage — Users’ Trust
Users’ trust is especially important for social media. Many traditional social media platforms are suffering a crisis of trust mainly because users’ individual interest often conflicts with the interests of centralized social media corporations like Facebook. Under this circumstance, the Ethereum community has earned fame for “seeking to pioneer new forms of governance that protect the rights of individuals” (Ibrahim Ludwick 2018). Ethereum is one of the few platforms that can do this, and Sapien Network’s choice to build on the Ethereum blockchain reflects that its business operating model can “share the benefits of this momentum”.
The Importance of Decentralization
Sapien Network is always contributing to building a decentralized social media platform and giving the final rights to its users. Ethereum is “by far the most decentralized application platform in existence”. It has drawn in many talented developers due to its underlying values built into the network. Many of Ethereum’s competitors also advertise their superior technical performance, but they still can not attract the same amount of open-source community that characterizes Ethereum. Therefore, Sapien Network finally chooses to build on Ethereum. Through its utility token, SPN, Sapien Network hopes to let users define the value of content, advertising impact, and their overall social experience (Krishnan 2018).
The Importance of the Proof-of-Value Consensus Mechanism
As a communication platform that “cherishes free speech, privacy, and democracy” (Krishnan 2018), Sapien Network hopes to build a social media platform that gives power to its users. It is easy for users to build communities and let them customize their social experience according to their own liking. Users can choose their identity as a real or anonymous one, as well as automatically toggle between private or public mode.
Under this circumstance, Sapien’s proof-of-value consensus mechanism plays an important role in reducing fake news. Every user has a dynamically changing reputation score, which is based on the contribution to Sapien. These reputation scores can reflect users’ “expertise and reliability on a given subject”. (Delton Rhodes 2018) Obviously, users can only gain a higher reputation if they can provide more authentic, correct, and valuable content. Meanwhile, users with high reputations also have more influence in the community and are able to promote more authentic and valuable content. Therefore, this mechanism can reduce the generation and dissemination of fake news to a certain extent.
Final Conclusions on Sapien Network
All in all, Sapien Network is “one of the most promising using cases for blockchain technology”. The team’s decision to build and develop it on the Ethereum blockchain reflects their dedication to “balance moral and ethical concerns with the practical side of technical development”. (Ibrahim Ludwick 2018)
The biggest problem for Sapien Network is how to meet its users’ needs of experience when faced with the limited throughput since Ethereum is suffering a slide and “Ethereum’s blockchain latency is slow and transactions take time to be verified”. (InvestInBlockchain 2018) To achieve mass adoption, Sapien Network will have to compete on “the user experience and familiarity” with traditional social media platforms. However, if Sapien Network can achieve both sides, the benefits would be incalculable.
Directions for future research
Blockchain technology is increasingly being used in the social media industry. As a decentralized and traceable technology, blockchain technology has great potential in the application of new social media. This article explores some pain points that traditional social media platforms struggle to address, including fake news and centralization problems, and discusses how existing blockchain technology can target these issues. Through some literature reviews and case studies, we can see many ideal frameworks or practical applications of blockchain technology proposed for these problems.
In the discussion of this paper, we can see that the decentralization of blockchain technology and the traceability system can help solve the problems of centralization and fake news tracing. But there is no good way to determine the authenticity of content or data. Future research can focus on but not be limited to:
How to build a blockchain social media platform model that can identify the authenticity of content?
How to build a more convenient way for users to realize the supervision of their private data, so as to expand the scope of users and lower the entry threshold for them?
How can blockchain-based social media platforms like Ethereum improve their scalability when keeping preserving robust decentralization?
About the Author
Yuming Gong
Yuming Gong is a rising-junior student at Duke Kunshan University (DKU). She majors in Political Economy with the track of Economics. As she often deals with all kinds of social media, she is concerned about the threat to public information security and hopes to seek solutions in the field of blockchain technology. She wants to further explore the changes blockchain brings to social media and work on addressing some of this industry’s pain points.
Acknowledgments
Executive Editor: Lewis Tian
Associate Editor: Xinyu Tian
Chief Editor: Prof. Luyao Zhang
