The recent purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk has divided the internet. On the one hand, some users think that the billionaire maverick’s cruel way of running the social media platform would help it reach its vast potential. Others believe that the purchase sets a bad example for the future of the internet as a whole.

Consider the matter carefully. Give one individual access to one of the most popular online information platforms. What possibly could go wrong? Even in the first phases of that takeover, we have already had a peek at the impending mayhem. So how should we prevent such situations? By decentralizing the ownership of future Internet social network platforms. It’s easier said than done, but several Web-based social networking sites want to implement this concept.

Decentralized social networking sites

In Web2, you primarily rely on the community standards of the platform you publish. Theoretically, there should be no issue with this. Social media users should be able to interact and share productively. Unfortunately, things are not that straightforward in reality. Despite Facebook’s best efforts, the platform’s moderation has proven to be a monumental challenge. Given that the site already has billions of users, there will be some site activity that the authorities won’t notice. In other instances, surviving individuals organize, which has socially devastating effects.

In other cases, legitimate projects get captured by Facebook’s censoring algorithms, depriving impacted people of their right to free expression. One of these users was activist Jillian York, who was banned from the network for a short time because she posted half-naked pictures to support a campaign to raise awareness about breast cancer. Commentators couldn’t help but talk about this event when they thought about the future of social media. In a 2017 Wired article, Chelsea Barabas, Neha Narula, and Ethan Zuckerman looked at whether or not a decentralized social media network could work. They said that getting people to use these platforms was the biggest problem that kept them from being widely used.

Also, read Top Ten Web3 Community Management Companies For Job Seekers.

They also said, “It’s hard to start social networks from scratch because of network effects.” “We join them because our friends are there, not for ideological reasons like decentralization.” This may have been true then and may still be true now, but others say that if we don’t question this assumption, “the human race” could be in big trouble in the future, as SingularityNET CEO and founder Ben Goertzel wrote in a January 2021 post on Coindesk. Goertzel says that in the future, social media platforms must be open-source, have decentralized ownership, make decisions democratically, and have “explainable” uses of the artificial intelligence (AI) that drives their content algorithms. Therefore, how can these social platforms beneficially serve humanity?

Mirror

What does a social media platform look like in your mind? It probably tries to be like Facebook by having never-ending content in various formats, like text posts, photos, videos, and NFTs. But if Instagram and Twitter have shown us anything, social media sites can thrive by concentrating on a single media type. Enter Mirror. The mirror is marketed as a Web3 alternative to sites like Medium and Substack. It is proud that ownership is shared among its users, which makes it decentralized.

Everything you submit on the website is your property. You can also mint everything you post on your site as an NFT, set up subscription fees with crypto, and even use the site’s features to make a DAO. The highlight? Everything is meant to be user-friendly. Users may freely read and write on the site by integrating their crypto wallet. Because of its simplicity, Mirror has proven to be a valuable platform for the Web3 community and project leaders to put anything in the area. The Mirror is a beautiful alternative for producing extensive white papers and intricate shitposts.

Minds

Looking for Web3 content with more variety? Give MINDS a chance. Users of MINDS, a decentralized version of Facebook, may enjoy a full-fledged social media experience without the existential horrors that lurk on Web2’s social networks. So, MINDS is based on features that show how much it cares about internet freedom. Its website says this means giving people practical ways to express their rights to free speech, privacy, self-sovereignty, community governance, a fully working crypto economy, and an open-source platform.

As previously mentioned by Goertzel, this last point is crucial. In the whitepaper for MINDS, its creators explain how the platform will solve the most critical problems in social media. In particular, the “Big Brother activities” of traditional social media, such as monitoring, changing algorithms, and censorship. To fight this, MINDS wants to be a significant model for social platforms in the future, especially by keeping its “entire software stack free and open source.”

LENS PROTOCOL

What if you could enjoy social media without being subject to the (often harsh) algorithms that drive it? The Lens Protocol aims to do this. The Lens Protocol is fundamentally a decentralized social network. In the current social media ecosystem, platforms control your and everyone you know social networks and may do anything they choose.

Social graphs are enormous data maps illustrating relationships between people and their favorite items. As a result, you may occasionally encounter frighteningly precise targeted advertisements. But what if you had all of this information? This is what Lens Protocol provides to its consumers. It starts with an NFT of your social graph, a list of everything you do online. Consider this the social media equivalent of “Soulbound Tokens” (SBTs).

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— GenX Analytics™ 🌟 (@GenxAnalytics) November 8, 2022

In the interim…

Adopting Web3’s values by using social media platforms made in its image is a good idea, but it’s not easy to make the switch. According to a 2017 Wired article, most users join a social media site because their friends are there, not necessarily because it reflects their ideals and values. However, this may not hold permanently. Ironically, the main goal of Web3 is to give ownership of the internet back to the billions of people who use it. This could lead to a return to the kinds of online experiences people liked in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Web3’s approach to social media tries to bring back the beautiful fragmentation of the past. It also lets people form and join groups based on their ideas and goals, which is more meaningful than fandom. People tried to make small communities based on their hobbies, interests, and connections when Yahoo was the default site. Will any of these Web3 social media sites compete with the Web2 titans? Maybe, maybe not. However, if these monopolies ever collapse, they will assist the internet in making sense of the rubble and guarantee that no one is hurt.