What is decentralized social media?

 

Decentralized social media, or Dapps, are social media platforms that are built using the smart contract network.

 

This means they are not run from a single company computer but are distributed among different ledgers of internet servers. 

 

Unlike now, when you browse through your social media, it reports your data back to a company, say Facebook or Google in the case of YouTube. With Dapps, your data is distributed among different blocks in the blockchain network, keeping you safe from being tracked by a single network.

 

How are web3 social apps different from the current ones?

 

Decentralized applications codes are open source, which means anyone can look at the code and see why or how it’s doing what.

 

A major difference from our current social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, or even YouTube, which run on closed source, means no one can really tell how they recommend your favorite song or how they can tell what you watched last time you were browsing the internet apart from relying on their PR explanations.

 

Dapps therefore bring back trust to the users. You don’t interact with an app blindly, not knowing how your data is being collected.

 

All the records of the application operations are decentralized. Their code being open-source means that they are open to public scrutiny. 

 

The backend of these apps is stored on a public and decentralized blockchain to encourage transparency, trust, and efficiency. 

 

What are the benefits of decentralized social apps?

 

Their code is executed across an enormous network; hence, you’ll get the desired results as long as a single block exists. 

 

The network will practically never go offline as long as your code exists on it. You know how sometimes Facebook or YouTube goes down either because the government feels its citizens do not need it or because the server’s down?

With Dapps, when one server is down, it’ll keep running because the app is powered by different networks. No central authority means not even the government can shut it down once it’s up and running.

 

We’ve seen and heard cases of videos, posts, and pictures being pulled down from a site or the user being blocked all together from using the app.

 

Censorship can be aggravating, especially if you believe it was done unfairly. in the new tech era of decentralized social apps, networking will be free from being restricted to the beliefs and opinions of certain companies or people. It is built to be a freer internet where everyone can express themselves without fear of getting silenced and locked out.

 

Another benefit of having the code stored and executed on different computers is that it’s impossible to take an application down without taking down every single node on the network. 

 

If you release a social application that’s better and cheaper than the famous one, it can’t just be bought and closed down. We can see how good Facebook is at this. The application will always live on the blockchain for everyone to use.

 

Well, that will not be the experience with Dapps. You can share your content without worrying about suppression. This is because of the fact that the apps’ data bounces on different networks, and when a code is written to run something on a blockchain, no one can stop it.

 

Another thing with Dapps is that you own your information. You can host your own social media platforms and set your own rules, leaving you free from the worry of your media or information being pulled down or censored by a company.

Simply put, they are apps for people, made by people, that make your user experience more interesting and comfortable.

 

What are some of the disadvantages of decentralized social apps?

 

Not having censorship. This is the biggest win in Dapps, but it is also a major downside.

 

No central authority means no one can block a user or moderate what they post. It’s a multiple-user platform, with no single controller, and all the users control their own information. People can abuse this power, resulting in negative consequences such as increased cyberbullying and cybercrime.

 

A message once posted can’t be erased by a company, like now when you can find “this comment was deleted or removed because it goes against our community guidelines.”

 

As I mentioned, one of the advantages of the Dapps is that they do go offline. Well, it’s a disadvantage too when the need arises that it needs an update. 

 

For the same reason that makes them hard to change or update. Once the code is running, there’s pretty much nothing anyone can do about it.

 

This can be bad if there’s a bug that’s affecting the users negatively. Imagine going through thousands of blocks one by one to remove a single bug!

 

That means every computer on the network has to have its software updated. Therefore, fixing bugs or updating Dapps is difficult if not impossible.

 

Built on blockchain technology, most Dapps don’t verify the user’s identity. Some even let users be anonymous. Hence, there is a high risk of internet thieves getting away with users’ money and information.

 

And with no one knowing who’s on the other end of the computer, cybersecurity can be somehow compromised and the safety of users under threat.

 

Simply put, Dapps are run on peer-to-peer networks of computers. We trust these people behind the scenes to keep the app running on the backend, so technically speaking, we still trust someone, only that now it’s not one entity but a collection of them. Jack Dorsey put it better on his tweet.