There is a hot debate around this topic with both sides having their own advocates.
Some say these social platforms are distracting us from real life and pushing us toward being unproductive followers. The other side says although they have some downside, the good in these platforms outweigh the negativity and they have created opportunities for connecting people together. But which one is right, or if both sides have some point, how can we eliminate the downsides?
The benefits of social media are no secret to anyone. Years ago, you could be a few miles away from your parents and could only see them a few times a year. Or if a pandemic hit, it could cause a widespread economic recession, because people could not go to work and the economy had to stop. But now, anyone, anywhere in the world is one click away from you with the power of these platforms. A pandemic hits and we all can work from the comfort of our homes! But no one can deny the downside either. Years ago, children used to play outside in the fresh air. People used to read newspapers and books when they got free time or speak to their family. Now, kids prefer to play all day with their gadgets and people scroll up and down on Instagram, without really getting any useful information from it.
The problem is not the social media itself, but is the way they are structured by their holding companies! How? Initially most of them are designed to solve a problem - that is the reason they gain so many users and become popular. However, the company needs money to maintain the application! So they optimize their platforms, which are now more intelligent, to increase the value in them for their investors and not to increase the value for their end-users. These two sides can be aligned in some areas but not all the time.
For example, Facebook was designed with the purpose of connecting people together and being a social media where you can meet people and know them, and say things that you would not normally say out loud because of social pressures. However, it is monetized through advertisement and that is how they earn money to maintain and improve it. The purpose then becomes to show you things that can hold you browsing in the application longer, even when you really don’t need to. They create the need, or deceive you into thinking there is a need!
You are watching a video that your friend posted from his dance and like the feeling of being connected to your friend on many personal levels. Then TikTok says look here is another cute dance of a stranger, ah look here is another one, and soon you’ve browsed through 100 dance videos without even planning to! This is exactly the moment something good turns into evil for a few minutes. And that is why it is so hard to tell if these platforms are good or bad.
Is there an alternative?
YES! We need to own the infrastructure! What costs a lot for big companies is the huge data centers that hold our data. And that’s what gives the power too! If we owned our data, like when we only had our Hard Drives, they could not use them against us, knowing what we like and keeping us for hours browsing without us really needing it. But owning data is hard, we need to maintain a server, if we could set it up in the first place! We cannot share photos with our friends easily through a few clicks, as we could not do that with Hard Drive! And what if we lose our data? We don’t have a copy elsewhere! This was true a few years ago. But blockchain changed this! Blockchain gives us the good in both private ”Hard Drive” and shareable “Cloud”. That’s what we are aiming for with “Box” at Functionland.
We are building a small gadget, where you connect it to the internet, and it gives you access to a pool of applications like “Facebook+”, metaphorically saying. Where you own your data on your Box but still get the same features and benefits you get from Facebook. Your data is also safe even if you lose your Box with the power of Blockchain because it is backed up securely over the nodes of Borg blockchain without a single person owning them or having access to them except you! You can share your data with whoever you want to as easily as you can now. No company can use the excuse of providing a service to you to access your data. Netflix wants to send you some movie suggestions? No problem, they send their movie list to your Box, your “Loyal Agent”, and it processes the information and suggests you movies. Your data never leaves your ownership. Your Box is loyal to you and puts your good as its paramount goal, not Netflix shareholders’ good over you, that’s why it is called your “Loyal Agent”.
As an extra bonus it automatically deduplicates your file, so you don’t have the same copy of a picture uploaded by both you and your wife! You can also have multiple Boxes and all get synchronized together automatically!
CONCLUSION:
Blockchain-Attached Storage is the future that helps us de-cloud and benefit from the superpowers of blockchain while porting over the benefits of cloud.
P.S. I left out the best part, which is the monetization of open-source thanks to Blockchain! Will get to it and the benefits in a separate article.