If you can't beat them, join them. There's nothing new under the sun, says the Latin adage. Then, the decentralized social media narrative is not dead. Before $HIVE, $STEEM moved up and down the coin market capitalization rankings. Before friend.tech, the platform known as Bitclout dominated the attention of crypto hopefuls. And before social media, people experienced better mental health.
These tools have the potential to benefit society. Misused, however, the tools bring harm to life as a result of grifters, scammers, distraction from valid applications and impacts to mental health.
Friend.tech is a decentralized social application that gained widespread attention from the crypto community in less than two weeks of its launch, August 11th. The app allows users to purchase "keys" associated with their friends' social media profiles. The keys grant exclusive access to the user's private in-app chatrooms and a stake in the user's token's value.
The only seeming innovation of this platform is the ability for trading bots to "snipe" or purchase newly minted keys. The bots then sell the shares for a tidy profit. The logic of exploitation holds. Twitter users involved in crypto leverage the platforms to share exploits like wallet drainers and make promotions without disclosure of payment. Vitalik Buterin's Twitter compromise led to great losses, for instance. In all, this mantra of profit maximization and unchecked solicitation erodes trust in cryptocurrency.
@Proveritas is my growth story I tell all the time.
Fortunately, on the $HIVE blockchain, resilience thrives. After all, the chain is the product of a community hardfork of $STEEM, a social media blockchain founded in 2017, where posts earn the governance token as rewards. $HIVE, improving on the situation with $STEEM, makes a better application for decentralized social media. Users earn the governance token, $HIVE, which is free of users' influence, unlike friend.tech "keys". Users award value, based on the proportion of their stake to the rewards pool, through likes. After 7 days, rewards payout to the author and curators (likers) fifty-fifty. This innovative model allows public interest to fund public goods, like irrigation systems and web3 learning in emerging countries.
New platforms drive innovation, but fragment attention, especially from enduring projects and valuable causes.
Valuable causes might include an alignment of healthy habits and social media usage, especially from Gen Z's point of view. Social media might empower Ghanaian people and their onboarding to web3, but for the Gen Z population surveyed by McKinsey, it's associated with negative feelings.
Negative effects seem greatest for younger generations, especially Gen Zers who spend more than 2 hours a day on social media. Equally noteworthy, while mental health experiences varied by region, Gen Z participants in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Nigeria rated their mental health as "very good" with the highest frequencies. Overuse might be the cause of negatives to mental health, but the less explored topic looks like the optimal level and its benefits.
Tools of all kinds hold both negative and positive potential. The value of decentralized social media feels lost on those more willing to continue the status quo. The desire to publicly fund public works pales in comparison to quick, personal glory and profit. Sadly, even self-expression and social connectivity fight with FOMO and poor body image for supremacy on social platforms.
The fight for the future has two sides. I know mine. Through written word, research, imagery and stories, I do battle. What do you fight for?