Blockchain Promises a Third Wave of Social Media

http://www.trustnodes.com/akasha-great-social-media-experiment

by Andrew_Quentin • 10 years ago

15 6 10 years ago

I took some notes on social networking on the blockchain about a year ago during the big Reddit upheaval surrounding sub banning, the voat migration, et cetera. I see blockchain based social media as an eventuality for a subgroup of the population. The Akasha website[1] is unfortunately very short on details.

I'm not convinced quadratic voting is a solution at all. If user account creation has a fixed cost then there is always a number of upvotes for which it's more cost effective to create alts and upvote en mass.

The real solution is moderation as a form of patronage. There's a demand for moderation in all social media, the supply however is limited in Reddit's case by a volunteer-only force and other systems by salarying an in house staff. Fee based moderation by subscription turns into a signal selection mechanism.

If advertising isn't the signal you want to select for, subscribe to moderation feeds that block those accounts/posts. If you want to block racis(m/ts) subscribe to moderation feeds that block that content. Aggregate and remix moderation feeds at will and let a market develop.

[1] http://akasha.world/

MihaiAlisie2• 10 years ago

Hello Aaron,

First of all thank you for taking the time to check out our project! Indeed the website feels a bit outdated atm as it was designed for the project announcement[1] and alpha signup, but we will change our website when we enter the alpha phase (Oct/Nov most likely).

We progressed quite a bit since the website release/announcement and we are now weeks away from sending pre-alpha invitations to the people who have signed up on our website.

The challenge you are pointing with regards to quadratic voting and proof of identity is indeed an interesting one and difficult to solve. Fortunately there are many bright minds in the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond who are working on this specific issue.

For us, especially in the pre-alpha/alpha stage, the quadratic voting is mainly used to support the authors with ETH for their contributions with minimal cognitive effort for the supporter - in a couple of clicks you could send anything from 1 cent to $1 for example.

There could be weird side effects such as a sea of alt ids created with the purpose of trolling, but it is worth mentioning that there are some costs associated with broadcasting these new identities on the blockchain so in some sense "trolling" will involve money.

That alone should discourage trolling to some extent, but again without real data and real people using the system this is just a theory. We will know more once the dapp is out in the wild :)

[1] http://blog.akasha.world/2016/05/03/unveiling-akasha/

aaron-santos2• 10 years ago

Thanks for the reply and good luck in your endeavors!

anonbanker• 10 years ago

seems to be working pretty well for steemit[0].

https://steemit.com

MihaiAlisie2• 10 years ago

Hello everyone,

AKASHA founder here.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, happy to answer your questions!

current_call• 10 years ago

Though it seemed for a period that Reddit/Facebook ended the constant migration, the cool kids are once more on the lookout for a new coffee house as it has become clear the current platforms have many intolerable shortfallings.

Yeah, I guess there were people stupid enough to think Myspace was forever too, but that's not your entire demographic! I bet all the cool kids can't wait to switch over to the newest social media platform. Oh wait, all the cool kids are still on IRC, email, and personal websites.

The pre-alpha version is to be released sometime this month when we can all see how this works in practice, but from Alisie’s description, the platform is a mixed combination of Medium, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook all in one.

Medium, Twitter, Reddit, and Facebok all in one?! Sounds legit.

Combined with the quadratic voting mechanism we mentioned earlier, the entire project becomes very interesting.

Yeah, I always felt like using the same voting system as bees would improve my social media experience. Super interesting.

The people who use Reddit, Facebook, and Hacker News(!) aren't desperately looking for an escape. They don't care. They have and have had plenty of places to switch to. They only care enough to get angry and then do nothing. That's what social media is. Getting mad about things and then doing nothing. If you actually care, do something besides up vote an angry post.

Blockchain Promises a Third Wave of Social Media

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