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I think the steelman arg I've found for crypto as a general social media replacement is based on three pillars. 1. Ownership by default. NFTs are kinda a silly

I think the steelman arg I've found for crypto as a general social media replacement is based on three pillars. 1. Ownership by default. NFTs are kinda a silly example, but since your wallet ("You") own your the token that represent your assets being able to transfer them around with you whenever you go somewhere new is cool. 2. Authentication with your wallet makes things much better. SSO for the whole web. 3. Alignment of incentives for users + service providers. (DAOs, traditional corps, etc.). So with a concrete example. In Web2 social network, the social graph is closed off along with all your account info. If you want to move to a different social media website, you have to reenter all your info and re-friend everyone etc. The corporation chose to ban people, and the only way you can in theory get a vote is through owning a share. In (the ideal) Web3 social network, the social graph is open b/c all your friends are attached to your wallet. If you want to move websites you can take them with you, or even have you be on multiple front ends. Even better you might get tokens to vote for certain proposals in the DAO, for example such as banning people off the site etc. Decentralization is valuable b/c it allows the above to happen, not because it's valuable in it of itself. Without a decentralized network there wouldn't be enough trust in the network for anyone to use it (long term). After all blockchains are basically one giant shared database, if someone thought you can modify it, it loses all value (Similar to fiat money in a way ;) )

jboy55 5y ago
One of the biggest issues I have with this is, I don't want you to see my friend list. I don't want you to see my wall, I don't want you to glean my interests by reading the public ledger. If you say, well, all of that is stored locally, or can be imported and exported to any 'front end' such as facebook/twitter. There's another big issue, what if your friends don't want to exist on that front end? Either events/posts are private, or they're on the public ledger and distributed. There's no way to keep interactions private. In the end, if we think of having these messages sent to clients directly and stored locally, have the clients being able to subscribe to groups, have the clients maintain the friend list, and people being able to post to sets within that list. We have this already. Its called email.
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  Hmmm I feel like this is technically in the weeds, but I'll try and come up with an answer. I'd assume a social network's storage layer would be distributed as well, on IPFS or something similar with an encrypted blob that includes all your content. Paired with a privacy focused scheme like Monero's where you can't see the contents of wallets you could keep the contents of social graph hidden, and do some transactions around. I'd also say that privacy wise it's not like our current systems are perfect. You had reddit admins deleting and modifying people comments for example. Not as bad as the general public being able to see your interactions, but not great if employees at these companies can see all your things you'd rather keep private. (And the design of these services makes it so that from a business perspective they want to see that data for targeting, and from a customer service perspective you want to be able to debug issues unlike crypto which rn has no CS expectations.) 0: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...
rjvs 5y ago
You already own any assets that you create by default. If you type a message into a text editor, you own the copyright on it. Under Facebook's Terms of Use, you more-or-less give up that ownership when you paste it into a form on their website. There is no intrinsic limitation in Web 2.0 technology that robs us of ownership, it is business incentives that do it. Please explain how adding a crypto wallet or blockchain into this mix changes anything meaningful.
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  Sure, I don't disagree with you. I'd ask what's the likelihood that we create new regulation that says that Facebook has to let you own your own content, or even export that content. I wouldn't say it's very high, where crypto is here now, and the default design is with ownership in mind. Plus with crypto's money side you can find different business models than traditional web companies. (As a matter of fact with a public blockchain data probably becomes a lot cheaper on a mass scale.) Crypto maximalism IMO is a "doomer" position, the idea of burning down more efficient and established systems for a new one. I personally don't know if it's a functional idea, but I can see a case.
AlexandrB 5y ago
> 2. Authentication with your wallet makes things much better. SSO for the whole web. SSO for the whole web means if you do something deemed "bad" you can be blacklisted from every service at the same time. How is this good?
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  Sure, but that's effectively that happens already with our centralized gatekeepers. See what happened to Alex Jones, regardless of if you think it was justified or not. With a crypto wallet, you don't have to start from scratch with a new account on a service that doesn't ban you because you own that data, in theory you could even port your social graph over. I don't think this is inherent to crypto, but it is inherent to decentrazlied open standards like Mastedon for example. The advantage that crypto "wallets" have here is that it's not just for social media, it can be for payments etc.

jboy55 5y ago

One of the biggest issues I have with this is, I don't want you to see my friend list. I don't want you to see my wall, I don't want you to glean my interests by reading the public ledger. If you say, well, all of that is stored locally, or can be imported and exported to any 'front end' such as facebook/twitter. There's another big issue, what if your friends don't want to exist on that front end? Either events/posts are private, or they're on the public ledger and distributed. There's no way to keep interactions private. In the end, if we think of having these messages sent to clients directly and stored locally, have the clients being able to subscribe to groups, have the clients maintain the friend list, and people being able to post to sets within that list. We have this already. Its called email.

hemloc_io 5y ago
Hmmm I feel like this is technically in the weeds, but I'll try and come up with an answer. I'd assume a social network's storage layer would be distributed as well, on IPFS or something similar with an encrypted blob that includes all your content. Paired with a privacy focused scheme like Monero's where you can't see the contents of wallets you could keep the contents of social graph hidden, and do some transactions around. I'd also say that privacy wise it's not like our current systems are perfect. You had reddit admins deleting and modifying people comments for example. Not as bad as the general public being able to see your interactions, but not great if employees at these companies can see all your things you'd rather keep private. (And the design of these services makes it so that from a business perspective they want to see that data for targeting, and from a customer service perspective you want to be able to debug issues unlike crypto which rn has no CS expectations.) 0: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-edit-comments https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13739026/reddit-ceo-stev...

rjvs 5y ago

You already own any assets that you create by default. If you type a message into a text editor, you own the copyright on it. Under Facebook's Terms of Use, you more-or-less give up that ownership when you paste it into a form on their website. There is no intrinsic limitation in Web 2.0 technology that robs us of ownership, it is business incentives that do it. Please explain how adding a crypto wallet or blockchain into this mix changes anything meaningful.

hemloc_io 5y ago
Sure, I don't disagree with you. I'd ask what's the likelihood that we create new regulation that says that Facebook has to let you own your own content, or even export that content. I wouldn't say it's very high, where crypto is here now, and the default design is with ownership in mind. Plus with crypto's money side you can find different business models than traditional web companies. (As a matter of fact with a public blockchain data probably becomes a lot cheaper on a mass scale.) Crypto maximalism IMO is a "doomer" position, the idea of burning down more efficient and established systems for a new one. I personally don't know if it's a functional idea, but I can see a case.

AlexandrB 5y ago

> 2. Authentication with your wallet makes things much better. SSO for the whole web. SSO for the whole web means if you do something deemed "bad" you can be blacklisted from every service at the same time. How is this good?

hemloc_io 5y ago
Sure, but that's effectively that happens already with our centralized gatekeepers. See what happened to Alex Jones, regardless of if you think it was justified or not. With a crypto wallet, you don't have to start from scratch with a new account on a service that doesn't ban you because you own that data, in theory you could even port your social graph over. I don't think this is inherent to crypto, but it is inherent to decentrazlied open standards like Mastedon for example. The advantage that crypto "wallets" have here is that it's not just for social media, it can be for payments etc.