Centralized social media platforms of today like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, among many others, have allowed billions of people to interact with each other in an instant manner. The rise of social media has accelerated the globalization movement, which is the rapid exchange of ideas, culture, and even ideologies from one jurisdiction to others.
Although many of these traditional social media networks allow consumers to interact with their followers at no apparent cost (“free” to sign up), and even promote their business, the platform owners are making a lot of money by charging hefty amounts for paid advertisements and other ways to generate revenue by taking advantage of the time and effort of their users. While the platform benefits tremendously from the input provided by the users and even large influencer accounts, the end-users are not able to earn substantial returns.
Even on streaming platforms and video sites like YouTube, there might be many accounts with millions of subscribers like PewDiePie or Jake Paul and MrBeast. However, these large accounts are still giving up a huge chunk of their revenue to the centralized platform owners. It’s simply not fair to the content creators who are working so hard to produce engaging material and then make hardly any money from it or not what they truly deserve.
Leveraging Blockchain Tech, Decentralized Infrastructure to Deploy Social Media Apps
That’s why we have seen the rise of alternative social media platforms that aim to leverage the power of blockchain technology and other forms of decentralized infrastructure. These types of networks are focused on enabling a fairer, more democratic social media ecosystem. While blockchain or distributed LEDGER tech (DLT) alone is not going to magically create a more equitable social media platform, it does help with establishing a foundation upon which many of these Web 3.0 apps are being developed.
By using distributed and decentralized storage space with the support of protocols like IPFS, many of these next-generation social media networks are beginning to provide a more engaging and rewarding experience to their users. Unlike more traditional social media networks, users are able to take advantage of a wide range of touted benefits such as truly owning their online reputation.
