Elon Musk (right) and Mark Zuckerberg (left).
Recent events have raised questions about online censorship and the influence of social media giants. Elon Musk’s critique of Mark Zuckerberg’s manipulation of the masses through algorithmic control drew attention to the opacity surrounding data usage. Musk’s hypothetical scenario – revealing how algorithms manipulate user data – highlights growing concerns about data privacy and content manipulation on centralized platforms. On the other hand, Musk himself is facing accusations by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that intensified the debate by urging advertisers to boycott his social media platform X (Twitter), citing concerns about increasing anti-Semitism.
These actions underscore the complex challenges faced by social media companies in moderating content and maintaining a balance between free expression and responsible content management.
A Paradigm Shift in Social Media and Privacy
There is a beacon of hope despite increasing data privacy and content manipulation concerns. Decentralization and user empowerment are the keys to shifting control away from centralized giants and back to the individual. As they pioneer solutions to address censorship concerns and privacy issues, decentralized social media protocols such as Decentralized Social (DeSo) and Mask Network offer a glimpse into a more equitable and safe future for social media.
In this emerging category of Communications & Social Media blockchain-based protocols, DeSo, Mask and 20 other initiatives have a total market capitalization exceeding half a billion dollars, according to CoinMarketCap.
Mask Network: Bridging Privacy and Decentralization
Suji Yan founded Mask Network in 2019 as a link between the internet and decentralized networks. Initially aimed at encrypting posts on mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, Mask Network has evolved into a multifunctional platform. An important feature is its ability to enhance online privacy. While maintaining privacy, users can send encrypted messages, transact cryptocurrencies securely, share files privately, and engage with decentralized applications (dApps).
DeSo: Empowering Users Faced with Centralization
DeSo is a blockchain designed to scale decentralized social applications. While significant attention has been devoted to scaling decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, DeSo has trying to change how global social media is designed. One of DeSo’s primary objectives is to counter centralization in contemporary social media. As mentioned above, concerns have been raised regarding the power wielded by a handful of corporations over public discourse in recent years. Content creators are often underpaid in outdated ad-driven models. DeSo presents a solution where user-generated content resides on a public blockchain. This approach eliminates centralized gatekeeper control and empowers creators and users.
Simplifying Onboarding for Decentralized Social Apps
Mask Network and DeSo are working to advance decentralization and user privacy, but face mass adoption challenges. One crucial challenge is seamless user onboarding. In contrast to legacy ecosystems, decentralized ecosystems require complex initiation processes, including cryptocurrency transactions, wallet installations, and protocols.
“The biggest challenge that decentralized social apps face today is getting the onboarding process to be as frictionless as possible, enough that the underlying protocol feels invisible. Most decentralized ecosystems, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are simply not designed with the average consumer in mind. As a result, we often see mainstream audiences jump through multiple hoops in order to get onboarded into a social app. This is vastly different from what consumers often expect from web2 social apps,” Ed Moss, Head of Growth at DeSo, summarized in an interview with me the pivotal challenges faced by decentralized social apps today. “Users must go through the process of buying crypto from a centralized exchange, transferring it to a wallet, which requires installing a Chrome extension, paying money to acquire a username, and further having to pay huge gas-fees when transacting on-chain, or when bridging between a plethora of existing layer-2 solutions. We found that the majority of consumers will likely drop off at that first step, so it’s critical that we obsess over simplicity and UX from day one to eliminate as much friction as we can between each of these steps,” Moss said.
As number of concerns have been raised about content moderation and censorship online, decentralized social media must first solve the user experience, security, and simplicity issues in order to enable mass adoption and make them relevant in the race versus centralized social media giants.
Further Reading
In this article I reviewed two category leaders with a token-based economic model – DeSo and Mask. However, there are more decentralized social media apps, such as Lenster, an application built on top of the Lens Protocol (which is on Polygon
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