The Internet is a colossal source of information about humanity; it has become not only a tool for learning, but also a tool for communication. Over the past few years, social media has taken over our world. They are used for correspondence, streaming, blogging and God knows what else - even for everything at once. Most of us use at least one social network every day. Many are not limited to this.
The popularity of social networks is largely associated with the possibility of self-expression, broadcasting ideas and thoughts to the whole world - this attracts people, especially young people. Other reasons for popularity include access to various kinds of information and simplification of communications.
Some people do not understand why social networks are needed and therefore do not use them. As a result, they are missing out on a lot of opportunities. However, networks, of course, gave us many undeniable advantages (for example, the emergence of new professions and entire industries). In addition, educational material can be found on these sites. It all depends on what kind of content you are interested in. Secondly, for most users, social networks are communication. And for some, this is almost the only opportunity to connect with loved ones. Thus, these sites are often used by those who live far from their relatives. After all, it allows you to correspond completely free of charge, exchange various kinds of files, and even make audio and video calls. Thirdly, such platforms provide an opportunity to earn. Many promote their business online or even become famous and receive income from advertising and a personal blog. So social networks have created a new option for generating income, which is now very popular.
The benefits of social media are often greatly underestimated. Some tend to think only about the shortcomings. However, we need to talk a little about the risks. By sharing content, commenting or sending messages, we can easily become a target for hackers, stalkers and various identity thieves.
And for us users, social networks are free (well, of course, conditionally “free”) - social platforms earn by selling our time and attention to advertisers. We have long been deprived of the opportunity to independently choose content - algorithms are involved in the formation of a smart news feed. Their main task is to keep the user inside the social network. After all, the more time a person spent in an application or on a website, the more ads he saw. Thus, in addition to the high level of involvement in the network, the interest of our users in the production and consumption of content brings significant profit to social networks. In addition, the variety of content is a plus only on the one hand. On the other hand, algorithms do not always work well. Also, the content authors themselves, at times, create low-quality materials. Because of this, social media can be tiring and even frustrating with low-grade information.
For the most part, we think the networks have kept us safe. However, it is rather difficult to assess the effectiveness of user protection measures today, because they are all extremely opaque. In February 2019, Zuckerberg said he planned to invest more than $3.7 billion in Facebook security.
“We are now taking steps that we could not have taken a few years ago. For example, this year we plan to spend more on security than all our revenue during ours, ”Zuckerberg wrote on his page. $3.7 billion is a really big amount. But that's only 5% of Facebook's annual revenue. And this is even less than the $ 5 billion fine that the network paid to the US Treasury for leaking user data.
Where did this money go? Zuckerberg kept silent about this. Two years later, it is difficult to say whether this really helped to improve the security of the social network in any way. In addition, at the beginning of 2021, there was another major leak of information about 533 million Facebook users. But the Facebook algorithm has not stopped collecting and processing data about user actions.
Now that we have considered the benefits and harms of social networks, the question arises - how then to use them so that there is no negative impact? What can we do?
And can we do the following - a new project - a decentralized web 3.0 social network on the Solana blockchain - Solcial, which allows you to use the network without fear of censorship, which is completely independent of both the state and the company managing the project.
Content storage is implemented on IPFS, access to it occurs through a peer-2-peer (p2p) layer of the Solana blockchain. No one except the user himself will be able to manage his content, will not be able to make changes, delete or use confidential information. Why? Because everything is based on blockchain. The blockchain chain, if in simple words, can be represented as a book with the ability to add pages. Each new page is written online, and the rest cannot be edited or deleted. Therefore, everything posted will forever remain in Solcial. The user will moderate the private content himself.
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