The myths of decentralized social media platforms versus the economic realities.

shortsegments (77) in decentralization • 5 years ago

Many cryptocurrency supporters love to praise decentralized social media platforms, and there are alternatives to the very successful centralized social media platforms, we must not lose sight of a few inconvenient facts.

First, centralization has its advantages and disadvantages, the centralized platforms like Facebook and YouTube provide the platform to content producers for free and with literally millions of people using these platforms daily, the content producers get free exposure of their content to potentially to a very huge market. But the disadvantages include no guarantees of renumeration and the potential loss of your account and all your content, at the discretion of the owners and operators of these platforms. The terms of service clearly spell out that these are private for profit businesses and that they have the right to operate primarily in their own best interest. Plus content creators give up all rights of ownership of their own content, under voluntary Terms of Service which clearly spell out your lack of rights.

Second, decentralized alternatives to Facebook and YouTube exist, which offer censorship resistance, ownership of your account and your content. But despite the hype about getting paid for your content, the same lack of a guarantee of any renumeration for your content is the rule on decentralized platforms. Additionally the number of users is much smaller then their centralized counterparts right now, and the challenge of signing up new followers or even moving large numbers of subscribers from centralized to decentralized alternatives is very challenging.

Lastly, let’s be honest, decentralized social media platforms based on Delegated Proof of Stake are not inherently decentralized. I realize that may be a tough pill to swallow, but hear me out and allow me to explain my point. Hive is an excellent example of distributed proof of stake and stake based distributed consensus. But it is stake which allows you to have a voice and influence on this platform. Remember that the DPOS decentralized platforms all start out relatively centralized with the majority of the stake concentrated in the hands of the early participants, early adopters and others who bought or were awarded significant amounts of stake early on. But the power and influence can become more decentralized as rewards are earned, Tokens sold by early adopters are purchased by newcomers, tokens thus redistributed and then powered up by a larger and larger number of participants.

So it is the nature I believe of DPOS to start out relatively centralized and it is up to the community to participate through earning or purchasing the Token, and then Powering it up to distribute the Token widely. It is this widening distribution of the a Token, and the power and influence which comes with it, that creates a decentralized platform. In other words, I feel truly Decentralized platforms are not born, but become decentralized by the community buying and earning tokens and spreading out the power and influence on the platform until it’s truly decentralized.

In short, the dream of a truly decentralized platform alternative to Facebook and YouTube is not a fantasy, but it’s complicated goal to achieve and requires hard work producing content and the investment of fiat currency to buy stake to obtain a voice in governance and the right to vote.

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