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Comment by daraosn | Hacker News Reader

Yes, cryptocurrencies and tokens have a lot of speculation from a dollar price perspective, and there are still non-believers and manipulators, but the blockchain and smart contracts technology is brilliant and the idea is already on people's mind, and it will only become stronger, despite of the price.

Social Network: For years I've seen people complaining about Facebook, others building alternatives. If there is one way that Facebook could be defeated and decentralized is by using a P2P blockchain social network. Take for example Steem, not perfect but proof of concept works.

Advertisement: another example is BAT (by the JS inventor), funded in 30 seconds, it could be a real threat to Google. Just pair it with Mist browser and ENS, and you can see the potential.

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I think it's no longer about Bitcoin, it's about a profound decentralization of the Internet. Some call it the Web 3.0.

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Why do you need a block chain for a decentralized social network?

Also what actual benefits would a "decentralized" social network bring? Facebook works because it got a lot of things right it let people communicate and share ideas rather than being a glorified geocities where bands come to die like MySpace and it got a critical mass of users which drove it home.

Blockchain will not decentralize the internet it might decentralize the World Wide Web, but even then considering the power costs and the fact that bandwidth still costs a ton of money even in developed nations why would you want to "decentralize" a bandwidth rich service in the current landscape.

I can understand the usefulness of a blockchain for certain applications e.g. clearing houses. But every time some one says it's like X but decentralized and runs on the hot new blockchain I just want to head bang a wall, I could be too old or too dumb to get my head around it but it simply looks to me that there is a cool toy that every one wants to use as a hammer which makes them look at everything that they want to build as a nail regardless if it makes sense or not.

First, it's not what I want, it's what I perceive – only my opinion.

Why a blockchain for social network? To really control my data and my online persona. It doesn't have to be a public blockchain, can be private and shared to my friends, if I wanted to.

I agree with you, that in poor countries the infrastructure is not prepared yet, but the world wasn't prepared also when the Internet was on dippers, this is just the beginning, I believe.

But again what technical (as in operational, functional etc.) benefits would a social network built on a blockchain would have vs a standard website?

Unless you'll use some sort of a thick client you would still need an application server that would take the data which I'll assume you'll store in the blockchain and present it to the user.

How would a distributed database that need to hold even 0.001% of the information stored in say Facebook be even feasible on consumer devices? Why would you want to wrap that data with expensive PoW/PoS algorithms and how would this give you any sort of control over your personal information considering it's a public (even if it's a private blockchain) database that anyone with access to it can store any copy or revision of it they would like.

I'm not trying to be coy or rude I simply do not understand the point of using a blockchain for any purpose other than finance, it gives you account consolidation, compliance, transaction and balance ledger all in one tool this is great but for anything else... I simply can't see it.

> To really control my data and my online persona.

But HOW does blockchain give you "control over your data" in a way that uniquely requires a blockchain? You can do a heck of a lot just with existing tools, like asymmetric crypto and hashing.

The only use I can think of right now is to globally prove that user X really did publish Y at some time Z in the past. In other words, preventing anyone from "backdating" a piece of content.

Now, while that may be useful, it's not really offering you more control over your public persona. It's really just restricting what everyone can do in order to curb a certain kind of abuse.

[Edit: Moved paragraph to top] I agree, too many people throw around "blockchain" as if it was a magic incantation.

However, focusing on the "decentralized" part of social networks, here are some possible goals/benefits:

1. You control your own content, in the sense of having a "walk away with my photos and posts" primary copy at all times.

2. Users can publish -- and subscribe -- without a single-point-of-censorship owned by a corporate or governmental gatekeeper.

3. More direct control over your "feed" of information so you can get what you want/need and be done, as opposed to Facebook's algorithms which put a higher priority on keeping you hooked into a stream of advertising.

4. Less "one platform to rule them all" lock in. Fundamentally Facebook doesn't want you to ever click out to another site with content. They want to do their best to force you to re-publish the same content in their own framework for their own ads.

But how is it different from hosting my own homepage (on tor or freenet)? It does everything you described without the blockchain fanciness.

> But how is it different from hosting my own homepage

How is a "distributed social network" different from "a homepage"? ...Really?

It implies a hell of a lot more than a static website. Subscriptions. Message-passing between nodes. Establishing (and breaking) bidirectional friends-links. Protocols for content-types, privacy restrictions, and metadata...

> without the blockchain fanciness

Yes, that is intentional. Like I said in my post, I'm very cynical about how much "blockchain" actually brings to the table. I'm focusing purely on the "decentralized" part.

I think people might have been interpreting your comment about blockchains as being along the lines of "people try to apply blockchains to /other/ things that they don't help much with", rather than meaning that they don't seem to do much for social networking sites.

Also, while I like blockchains for some stuff, I agree with much of what you are saying here.

1) your content and posts are online it doesn't prevent anyone from copying them, not to mention that while you can design a blockchain and that allows you to permanently delete content it doesn't prevent anyone from storing revisions of the blockchain that had that content or republishing that content again; sure it won't be signed with your key but those drunk photos you took during spring break will still be there.

2) There is still a single point of censorship; distributed internet isn't distributed unless you control the physical infrastructure a government can simply shut your blockchain down.

3) RSS

4) What does this has to do with a blockchain?

Again nothing here requires a blockchain, some of it might actually be harder to implement in the manner you speak off with one.

> Again nothing here requires a blockchain

Yes. That's intentional. Did you read my post fully before replying?

I read you both and I didn't see you address the primary question:

Why do you need a block chain for a decentralized social network?

You seem to be having problem following the conversation. Please look at the first two sentences of Dogma1138's post, which contain two questions: (A) Why blockchain (B) Why decentralized.

My reply can be summarized as: (A) I agree, blockchain isn't needed (B) ...but decentralization can help in these areas.

Look at steemit.com (steem.io) for a glimpse of the application of blockchain to social media.

Basically: the blockchain's ability to represent value turns upvotes into microdonations.

Suddenly writers of popular content are rewarded in liquid tokens for their efforts. That's a pretty big deal.

The internet itself is a shiny new hammer. Turns out you can bang on a lot of different things with it and actually cool things happen.

While I think we ought to be skeptical of "tons of money poured in, therefore it's a good idea" sort of arguments, I agree that there is definitely value here.

Cryptocurrencies promise to nativize scarcity on the web. The absence if which has led to some amazing things, but has also caused some troubles. Ideally, we'll now be able to capture the best of both worlds. A free and open internet, but with opt-in monetary incentives and scarcity.

There's definitely value in cryptocurrencies, in the sense of significant promise of being useful for new types of financial instruments and transactions. This does not preclude the possibility of there being a crypto bubble, i.e. demand/excitement causing the price of the currency to rise far far above its current level of usefulness.

The ultimate usefulness of cryptocurrencies is determined by things that may take years or decades to figure out a way to do: everything from 'is it a good store of value' to 'can I shop with it on Amazon?' to 'can I use it to issue equity for my startup?' This gradual growth in usefulness does not really match the tendency of coins to double in price in very short periods of time, so the question is whether the temporary bubbles and disappointments are severe enough to disrupt the gradual growth in base value. This is no different from real estate bubbles potentially making things painful for people who just want to buy a house to live in it.

Ya, definitely agreed. Although I would add the caveat that the rapid growth in value of these coins is not necessarily that crazy. The market cap of the entire ecosystem is still less than 100 billion. Which, no question, is a lot but it's still less than 1/7th of Apple, which is only a single company. So while I agree we might be in a bubble, I don't think the current crypto valuations are at least prima facie necessarily a bubble.

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