Losing its ongoing legal battle, the Chinese-run TikTok social media platform is facing a potential ban in the United States before January 20th, 2025. Having amassed over 170 million users, TikTok has officials worried about its increasing visibility into the lives of US citizens.

To lessen the threat, the American government wants TikTok sold to a non-Chinese entity, or otherwise outright banned in the country. The US claims TikTok's parent company Bytedance is linked to the Chinese Communist Party, and needs to be reigned in.

US authorities probably aren't happy that China is gleaning data from American TikTok users. As the Chinese feed the video, audio, and transcriptions of TikTok videos into their various AI algorithms, they can keep themselves apprised of the overall sentiment of the American populace.

The potential ban on TikTok presents us with an opportunity, however. What if we could create a version of the platform that's not under the control of a single entity, but rather decentralized in nature, censorship-resistant, and owned by the community instead?

Decentralized Alternatives

The world is accelerating towards a decentralized future, where multiple front-ends will be able to access the same content secured by the blockchain. Case in point, news has come out that all the content on video-sharing platform Odysee is being uploaded to Web 3.0 storage provider Arweave.

In addition to Arweave, we have other DePIN storage networks like Jackal, Storj, and Crust, where videos can be permissionlessly uploaded and permanently stored in a decentralized manner, preventing the censorship of content.

For a while, in cooperation with 3Speak, InLeo had "shorts", which mimicked TikTok and had been gaining in popularity. Unfortunately, 3Speak experienced unexpected technical difficulties, revealing that their video-sharing platform may not be so decentralized.

Once 3Speak is fixed and decentralized (which is rumored to be soon), we may finally have a good Web 3.0 alternative to TikTok.

Benefits Of A Potential Ban

With over 170 million users, I'm sure there will be a lot of crying and complaining if TikTok gets banned in the United States. Of course, there are ways around a ban, but what percentage of the platform's users know how to configure a VPN on their smartphone? Probably very few.

We could also look at the ban as a potential overall plus for American society. One could argue that platforms like Instagram and TikTok have been affecting the mental health of its users, and having an overall negative impact on society.

For example, ever since the advent of social media, simps have been giving woman way too much attention, leading most girls to set unreasonable expectations for a husband (6 feet tall, six pack, six figure income, etc).

At some point, we will have to prioritize society over the short-term profits these networks produce.

Until next time...

Decentralized social media will likely gain some traction if TikTok is indeed banned in the US. With decentralized storage platforms taking off, the idea of community-owned video-sharing networks is finally coming to fruition.

If you learned something new from this article, be sure to check out my other posts on crypto and finance here on the HIVE blockchain. You can also follow me on InLeo for more frequent updates.

Resources

BBC Article On TikTok ban [1]
TikTok Ban Image [2]
Social Media Harms Women Image [3]