FACEBOOK: Can the blockchain turn around otherwise impending doom for the centralized network?
An opinion piece for a change of mood this weekend. Our light-hearted take on recent events regarding the recent Facebook user privacy scandal and the #deleteFacebook movement. One for you to discuss freely in the comments, and a giveaway below!
A company allegedly managed to use the targeted marketing campaign features to scrape private data on 50 million Facebook users, mostly USA citizens. They then used this to run a sophisticated, user profiled and highly targeted political campaign ahead of presidential elections which has been paraphrased "an automated giant propaganda machine". So it seems, the world is now up in arms that Facebook has turned on them, and their worse fears have emerged, it's controlling their every waking moment. What next for the worlds largest social network?
Outrage ensued, manifesting itself around the #deletefacebook hashtag. Predictable really, as Facebook has long been a danger to its own users, alongside the sociopathic digital "fruit machine heroin jackpot" of its infinitely scrolling feed. People are not only catching on it’s not good for them, they are starting to ask “where is all my data? Who owns everything I’ve posted on Facebook, for nothing, for 10 years?”. Suddenly when feasible content creation reward system networks like STEEMIT.COM exist, the debates get a lot more interesting. Now with the latest news, it seems to have opened a tin of worms for Mr. Zuckerberg …
Slightly from the leftfield and unexpected, along comes Elon Musk
Elon Musk, apparently joining the #DeleteFacebook movement while not even realizing these Facebook pages existed for his own company, ordered his SpaceX and Tesla business pages taken down. Much to the chagrin of his social media team no doubt, as they had 2.6 million follows. Meanwhile, Facebook is now plunged into terrible PR crisis.
Yes, this is real from Twitter …
Unfashionable as it is to be kind to Facebook on Steemit - For many, it’s been a lifeline of communication in a busy crazy world. To their communities, clubs, schools, families, friends back home and more. For the generation of both young and old, that email conveniently skipped. Then they placed the app into every operators phone to be as easy as cheesy – and Facebook goes down in history as a software that did eat the world. The author did personally believe at one point, for thousands of small businesses (and large) Facebook would bring them a well needed blip on the radar. You could, before the whole monetization and ads got really greedy, bootstrap a business from a Facebook page if you were keen. Those days are done however, and now you need to compete with a gazillion other pages or pay continually into campaigns. Campaigns which although still effective, require a budget and strategy of skill beyond the grasp of the simple kind of folks they were initially intended. The corporations win again.
SO WHO IS THE BAD GUY?
Talk about a lost mission … everyone is pointing fingers at Facebook, so why are they so wrong? They only let everyone provide their details willingly, and knowingly. Then they only provided the targeted audience marketing tools. Then it was Cambridge Analytica with the lack of moral compass who came to abuse the privileges of the Facebook network advertising functionality to the maximum.
It's pot kettle black all over. Perhaps this is, just the beginning of the end for Facebook - or like some of the long-standing great brands, they could pivot? Will decentralized blockchain technology be that pivot - after all, where is there to go, and how else could it be done. Is it then no coincidence this technology would enable Facebook to give power back to the users? Please discuss the future in the comment section.
Meanwhile, Elon does have a thing against Zuckerberg, that is for sure. No mention what his stand is on cryptocurrency, however, we do have a message to pass on: In Space the aliens must be using crypto, as unlike gold, it weighs nothing to get off the ground … weightless cash for inter-galactic travelling salesmen.
Musings on a Decentralized Facebook
How would they migrate all those years of content back to the hands of individuals? Yet it may be possible in a loose sense, to award every user a number of tokens equivalent to every post, Like and comment ever made.
Users each have a slice or (to borrow an ETH term, their own ‘shard’ of the blockchain exclusively holding all their own content and holding the keys to it cryptographically. Biometric ID verification and all sorts of desirable features could be added, including account recovery. After all, Facebook has always had a big fight with fake profiles. These are all points to take on board when we talk futurism, the blockchain, and social media. Then, there are all the possibilities of advancing the tech such that a user always retains rights or control of when a photo is used, or other digital content.
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QUESTION: Will existing social networks pivot to the blockchain, or be obliterated by it?
Leave your answer and BitShares account name in the comments.Will @APAsia.tech follow suit and delete our Facebook?
We like to make a point, yet we like to take both sides of the story and not ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’. Will you #deletefacebook? The author can certainly report a drastic reduction in their own Facebook usage since joining steemit. We’d like to hear more from you, and all are welcome to ignore or not follow us on our Facebook page Otherwise, it's always a good time to lock down those privacy settings...
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