Decentralized social media and six reasons it is better

Transcript

why web3 social will transcend its web 2 counterparts that's the question that we are answering today and so we've been hearing tons about web3 social media platforms lately but if you haven't been keeping up you're probably wondering why we need web3 social when we've already got Twitter Facebook Instagram and more well it all comes down to who holds the power in web 2 power lies with corporations who seek to maximize Revenue but in web 3 it's all about giving power back to users and creators enabling the best user experience possible so in this deep dive I'll cover more on what's wrong with centralized social media platforms and all the ways that web3social offers a better option so here's what you need

to know if you're still a fan of web 2 social if you're a Creator public figure or simply running a business that revolves around or is based on social media which is basically all businesses at this point then you know exactly what's wrong with our current platforms but for everyone else here's what you should know about web2 social censorship is common on web 2 platforms the minority so Executives board members Etc decide how web2 social is run users don't own their data and security is an afterthought so let's dive into these four separate problems and break them down further censorship is Rife now censorship is a touchy subject because some level of censorship is a good idea

for example when it comes to sharing the private details of other individuals or doxing uploading illegal or copyrighted materials such as movies hateful content such as the anti-semitic remarks that Kanye shared recently and graphic content such as violence or pornographic material censorship also helps to curb propaganda such as some of the content you likely saw during the early and middle stages of the kova 19 pandemic however there's a fine line between good censorship and limiting content just because it doesn't fit a platform's political agenda now I'll preface this by saying I'm not a big fan of politics in general and that I don't really have an opinion on who is in the right here

but love them or hate him Twitter permanently Banning Trump from The Social Network can be seen as censorship going too far well there was obviously some tension around the election nothing he said explicitly incited violence instead it was Twitter's interpretation that got him banned another example is when Facebook decided to force business pages to advertise on the platform because their content wouldn't be shown organically well this is an outright censorship it's still forced businesses to pay to play so again it's not about their opinion on the person who is censored or what was censored it's the fact that it can be censored and that's the problem so the minority runs the show like the Facebook example above web 2 social networks put profits in board members

before users do you think Facebook made that move to improve the platform's user experience right as much as they'd argue it is Facebook's advertising Revenue makes up 97.6 of its total revenue on the other hand you have Elon Musk and Twitter since he bought the platform he's made some serious changes in hopes of Reviving the platform however not long after he shared that Twitter could be close to bankruptcy imagine trying to build your social profile when platforms like these could change their policies or shut down a platform at any time the next Facebook whistleblower even recently testified that the company puts profits over people's safety she also shared some internal documents regarding an algorithm change in 2018 that Facebook knew would favor

sensationalistic click bait content now let's go to the third one which is data ownership or what data ownership really on the note of building social profiles one of the biggest problems in web 2 is that users don't own their data you could spend years building your presence on Facebook Instagram or Twitter and have it disappear in an instant whether you choose Facebook or Twitter the platforms themselves own and benefit most from your content creators generate tons of content bringing more eyes to the platforms they post on and making the platforms more attractive to advertisers the problem here is that creators get very little renumeration for their effort for example Facebook earned 117.9 billion dollars in 2021 but what did the platform do with this

Revenue they decided that in 2022 they'd pay one billion dollars in total to the platform's creators one billion that's less than one percent of the revenue they generated in 2021 and if you don't like Facebook's terms well there's not much you can do besides posting other platforms with similar Revenue structures you can't even take your followers or content with you even though it was your hard work that built your following and just to give an example here I had my own Facebook account block still is today still don't know why and Not only was I running a business on Facebook so this basically completely ruined my business but it also removed all of my childhood photos and photos from friends and stuff in high school so it really sucked to be completely honest but that's the power that they have right and they still have

never told me why which is pretty crazy so but what if you're a consumer rather than a Creator well Creator Revenue probably doesn't bother you right but what should bother you is the amount of data mining that happens on these platforms so they can offer hyper targeted advertising web 2 platforms collect and analyze user data think things like clicks view time and other actions that you're doing on the platform and effectively monetizing your data without giving you anything in return besides the platform with some decent content something doesn't add up here and then poor security which is probably something we don't really think too much about but let's think about this centralized systems are much easier to hack than their decentralized counterparts so it's no surprise that web 2 social platforms have fallen victim to hacks many times over the

years how many well Facebook leads the charge with eight data breaches with the most notable while not technically a data breach being the Cambridge analytica Scandal which saw Facebook selling 87 million users data this wasn't even a data breach they actually just gave it to these businesses Twitter has experienced four data breaches with the most notable being 330 million account passwords being exposed due to a code glitch and even LinkedIn has had four breaches with the most notable being a breach of 165 million user accounts seems like they're too focused on monetizing your data rather than working on security but there is a better choice and it's coming and this is why web3 social is better for users the future of social media is here and

that future lives in web 3 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to their profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphing followers in the form of nfts this

allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables self-sovereignty for your social graph and interoperability across the internet at web3 Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've partnered with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today unlock protocol is the nft membership protocol for web 3. content subscriptions Community Access event tickets are all forms of memberships one of the most common business models for creators and entrepreneurs today building an nft membership opens many new possibilities for your members

everything from tailored multi-platform experiences to the ability to sell an unfinished subscription on secondary markets these are things just not possible in web 2. however in order for this business model to work creators need nfts which are time bound or have built-in recurring payments unlock protocol does this for your nfts better yet with a few simple steps you can create your own nft contract without code what WordPress has done for websites unlock protocol is doing for membership nfts if you're an nft Creator you can't rely on royalties as they are likely going to zero you need recurring

Revenue you need unlocked at web3 Academy We Believe nft memberships are the future of business and community and that's why we decided to build on unlock learn more at unlock dashprotocol.com web3 social networks put users first rather than profits they're focused on building a better experience where users don't have to put up with centralized authorities who make decisions in their own best interests web 3 social platforms actually care about what creators and users think allowing them to shape the features and vision of the social network they use but to get more specific there are six reasons why I believe web3 social will overcome web 2

in the coming years let me break those down for you real quick one interoperability and composability put user experience first this one's super exciting two there's less censorship thanks to decentralization three users actually own the networks they build regardless of the platforms they use four creators don't have to put up with a platform's monetization policy but can instead decide on monetization themselves this is one of the most exciting in my opinion number five you'll be able to verify your identity without having to share personal information and number six web3 is much more secure ensuring your personal data is safe so let's break these down a little further so you can actually grasp these Concepts and understand them and

um and make sense of each so let's start with interoperability and composability allowing for better ux interoperability refers to web3 protocols being able to interact with each other without the need for extra permission for example dapps built on lens protocol which is a decentralized social graph can easily interact with each other since they all share the underlying technology in web 2 this would be like Facebook and Instagram being linked since they're owned by the same company or meta except in web 3 ownership doesn't determine which daps and protocols can interact it's about the open source technology they share which leads to composability the composable open source nature of blockchain means that developers don't need to constantly code platforms from scratch instead they can use existing

code from lens for example or other applications built on lens and this is exactly what favor and orb who we had in our podcast before did instead of having to build their own blockchain and social graph they leverage lens open source code so they could focus on building the extra functionality they wanted their respective platforms to have it also means that if platforms don't put their users first an entrepreneur an entrepreneurial Dev could easily create a similar application that does meet users expectations and since it's much easier for developers to build web through social networks there will be more options for users and so users can just jump around to the app that they like the most it's very easy for them to do that but interoperability isn't only good for developers it also means that users can

take their followers their profile data and content between different platforms between different applications for example lens supports interoperability by creating nfts for each action user's take on the platform so posts your followers your handle your account and since nfts allow ownership it allows owners to take them not only around the lens ecosystem but also eventually to any protocol or wallet that supports these nfts this means you don't have to stick around on platforms that don't value you and it unlocks some insane options for cross-platform gated content this to me is one of the most exciting things in web3 just the ability that you can create a following create content on one

platform and at any point you can move to another one and everything moves along with you that is just so exciting just something we it's something we can't even think about I think in web2 so it's pretty exciting but let's go to number two here decentralization means Fair censorship as I said above censorship is necessary in some circumstances however censorship should reflect the values of The Wider Community using a particular platform it's a common practice for protocols in web3 to let their users vote on company decisions for example in webview Social this could be voting on censorship guidelines and where to draw the line on different types of content this means platforms couldn't suddenly ban advertising or content on certain topics yeah I'm talking about you Banning crypto advertising Mr Zuckerberg what a

show that has been for no reason but in web 3 censorship isn't about promoting or silencing a particular political agenda or curating content to fit a needed narrative instead it's about making platforms open to all who want to use them it's about enabling diverse healthy conversations and debates around topics that shape our world and the other beautiful thing about this is if an application let's say on top of lens does decide to censor maybe another one doesn't and you can just move to that one if you have a strong Community you're creating great content your followers will come along with you and you don't have to do anything for that because again they just Port over via interoperability standard with nfts so it's pretty amazing and how this will allow us to just make the decisions and go to the

places that we are treated best so let's go to number three identity ownership and portability ownership and data portability are arguably the biggest unlocks of web3 social we spend most of our time online and our social identities are just as valuable as our in real life ones our social profiles help us find jobs friends or even customers if we want to start a business but without ownership like in web 2 our hard-earned networks can be lost without a trace for example Jonathan lintala the founder of favor who we had on our podcast shared an incident with us where his grandmother actually lost all her Facebook data because of a simple mistake she accidentally set her profile age too low and instantly lost 10 years worth of memories photos and family

interactions very similar what happened to me when you own your social identity this can't happen it also means platforms can't mine your data without your permission stani the founder of lens put it perfectly having an on-chain profile would mean that you could actually have the ownership of the audience you create and your self-expression and no one can actually take that away from you in web 3 no one can take your social profile from you instead you can take it wherever you want without losing your followers or your content number four control over monetization and engagement Creator monetization in web 2 is broken platforms use algorithms to determine the most profitable ads to

show in between a Creator's content and they take most of the profits if not all for doing so if creators don't like it there's not much they can do if they want to keep making money but in web 3 many platforms see the value of creators and are putting them first for example woobits is an upcoming web3 social platform that gives creators complete control over content monetization how well basically every piece of Premium content is its own token so for example a crypto Trader could post free daily crypto analysis however they could easily create a special report that goes beyond what they normally post and token gate it on the woobits platform this is the kind of control that web 2 platforms will never give creators and since social graphs in web3 are

portable it means that creators can always choose the platforms that best suit their needs if a new platform provides better monetization options you can easily take your content and followers with you and this to me is really really cool in web 2 social Twitter Instagram whatever you can't really do anything to monetize your content on there you actually have to move them off get their email and monetize via a newsletter right or monetize via your own sponsorships with sponsored ads and things or build a course but again it has to be off platform so you usually or you have to create a product but your content which you put so much work into you can't do anything with in terms of monetization web3 changes that completely as I mentioned you can token gate things you

can make costs for people to follow you to collect your content you can do so many different things which are really really cool in some web 3 platforms even plan to reward consumers for their participation for example favorite plans to be a shared earned platform where users curate content from around the web with high quality content receiving more rewards this creates a circular economy where everyone wins so there's just so many more opportunities and features that you can tie into a social media platform when it is built on a blockchain chain and when it is built using interoperable features so down to number five trustless instant identity in credential verifications in web 2 there's no real digital verification process for

credentials I could literally say that I graduated from Harvard on my LinkedIn profile and no one would bad an eye especially if I was good at Photoshop sure I may run into problems if I applied to a big tech company but a small business chances are they wouldn't know the difference but in web 3 these type of credentials can easily be verified on chain without the need for re-verification not only can this keep us safer from scammers but it also means we can easily verify our own identities and credentials without getting documents certified by third party for each new verification using the internet is also much simpler in web3 all you need is a wallet you don't need to share your details constantly no birthday address phone number or anything like that just sign a message in your wallet

and you are good to go but one of the coolest parts of web3 is that you can prove certain information such as your age without explicitly sharing how old you are for example if you want to buy alcohol you could prove that you're above the legal age without sharing or stating your actual age now this is why your age isn't exactly sensitive information zero knowledge proofs are a powerful tool for keeping ourselves safe online and it can do so many more features in terms of sharing certain pieces of data or information when it's required number six the last one web three is more secure so web 2 platforms rely on centralized databases which provide a single point of vulnerability that hackers can exploit and the same happens

in web 3 with most of the hacks actually coming from centralized actors such as Bridges or centralized blockchains which aren't true web 3 entities but through decentralization cryptography in methods such as zero knowledge proofs protocols have the means to safeguard user data at all times web3 social also shies away from the intrusive data mining that web 2 platforms use to sell advertising for example Facebook's pixel literally has the power to track all of your moves online they can tell advertisers the products you click on whether you added them to your cart and so much more so armed with this information advertises advertisers can easily Target you with ultra specific ads related to the products you clicked on Jonathan shared with us on a previous podcast that

Facebook was even able to track user GPS locations it can track your mic and listen to the things you're saying and so much more so this means Facebook housed in may still have sensitive information relating to where people live in the places they frequent now imagine if this data was exposed in a breach so web3 social is coming we're still in the very nascent stages of web through social networking social networking but there's plenty happening in this space we've got foundational protocols like lens that allow users to truly own an interoperable social profile that they can use across any dapps built on the platform for example you could use your lens handle to access favor without creating a new profile at the moment developers are building hundreds of

applications on lens from new social networks to Creator tools and so much more this is only one particular social ecosystem in web3 with the power of Open Source blockchain we'll be spoiled for Choice regarding social networking so we don't need to worry about all the problems of web2 social instead we can look forward to what's coming next now how far are we out from web3 social becoming the the flipping in the new search that we use it's tough to say like I said the ux is not there yet but the features are right and what's going to happen in my opinion is that creators are going to go where they are treated best and then consumers the users they're gonna go where the best creators are right and so yeah right now it's

best to be on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube because that's where you can get the most reach but soon enough this will change in web 3 social networks will be that place where you get the most reach or maybe not the most reach but you can earn the most by posting your content maybe you have 10x less the amount of reach but you can make 10x the amount of Revenue that's going to force creators over there it doesn't matter if they have a hundred thousand fans or ten thousand if they can make more they will move to web 3. in the moment that creators see this and understand this that's when they all move over and that's when web3 social begins to flip and if you are looking to start creating content I would highly recommend you start playing around in these web 3 social platforms and start

learning some of the new features and some of these opportunities we don't know the Playbook yet we don't know the best way to monetize your content but that's something we're exploring and in the New Year it's something that I'm going to create a bunch of episodes on I'm going to start interviewing a bunch of people in terms of nft content creation across many different platforms so not just social but music and mirrored like stuff in paragraph where you can nft your articles I want to really start to understand how we can monetize content and so look for that coming in the new year it'll be a big series and something I want to try to uncover and really deeply understand but friends thank you so much for listening to this episode I hope that you enjoyed it I hope that it gave you some insightful information regarding

where social media is going and thank you so much for listening and being a consistent listener of web3 Academy again hit us up with a subscribe follow a like wherever it is you're listening that helps us grow and I wish you all the best