Do You OWN Your Account or Are You Just Leasing It?
A lot of people never even thought about this, most never will until they are banned and everything they build on social networks is gone forever.
YOU DON'T OWN YOUR ACCOUNT
On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and any other web 2.0 social network account that you use is just leased to you by the company that owns the platform. And they can take it away whenever they want. You can send a complaint, you can beg for it, you can campaign to your followers to make noise and ask the platform to lease it back to you (if you have your followers on some other social network, or if not all of them take your lease at the same time). But in the end, you are at the mercy of your "landlords".
And they can have mercy on you and let you stay for a while more or they can find all kinds of smart or stupid reasons to just say "our platform our rules and you broke some", or maybe even never respond to you.
Most creators when they start to get bigger start thinking about it, and often i heard "don't put all your eggs in one basket". If they are on youtube they try to get their audience to follow them on Instagram, Twitter... But most know that they don't own accounts there either.
One thing that was here from the beginning of the internet and was used forever was email and mailing lists. Maybe i was just not noticing it few years ago, but lately, i see they are making a comeback. Creators see it as the last straw for them to stay connected with their fan base if de-platformed or shadowbanned. But i bet i am not the only one whose inbox looks like this.
Yes, some people were triggered few days ago when i shared this screen capture :D Sorry.
So mailing list sometimes does not work :D
Latest events got more people thinking about censorship and what could happen with their accounts. More people started thinking about their voice on the web.
Hive is still a small community of communities. And there are a lot of front ends that will show your content. And most will say that they will not censor you. But the reality is, they are run by people, and people can make a decision that they don't like something connected with their name.
But blockchain does not care. It does not care if you are left, right, white, black, yellow, green, gay, straight, trans, or alien. And Your Account, Your Followers and your posts are on the blockchain. Some front ends may decide that they don't like you, even if all decide that they don't like you, as long as you own your keys, you own your account.
Sure Hive is not perfect, it has it's flaws and problems. But i am not aware of any other project that has(as theycallmedan said):
- No ico
- No premine/founders reward
- No founder
- Born via a crypto war for #freespeech
- 100% community owned
- Largest holder has 3% of supply & is anon
- 4 years + running without content/account loss
- Scaled for the masses
In the future it can only progress and be better.