Microblogging based on Blockchain
Microblogging is a combination of blogging and instant messaging that allows users to create short messages to be posted and shared with an audience online. Social platforms like Twitter have become extremely popular forms of this new type of blogging, especially on the mobile web — making it much more convenient to communicate with people compared to the days when desktop web browsing and interaction was the norm.
All current popular microblogging applications like Twitter, Telegram or Facebook are based on centralisation and subject to censorship, private data leaks and government control / blocks. Messages are stored at servers of the provider. All over the world. Latest headlines are that the Russian government blocks Telegram access for Russian citizens because Telegram does not want to give the encryption keys and wants Facebook to store their data in Russia.
Lets create a decentralised Blogging application
Lets say we will create a decentralised Twitter. Imagine the use case where all user Tweets, Direct messages, Likes etc are stored on thousands of computers all over the world and you own (and have access to) your own private encryption key. What benefits would this have;
- Your tweet cannot be censored (nor deleted)
- Direct messages can be encrypted end-2-end (only you and the receiver can read the messages)
- You have full control over your data
- No central authority can deny access
- If you encrypt your data and store it, you are the only person to de-crypt it
- Private Micro payments can be utilised (by using stealth and features)
You should own your data, you should be in control!
Off course these are just a few examples of the benefits storing micro blogging in a Blockchain would have. There are also some things to consider like;
- The decentralised microblogging service based on Blockchain stores your data. Once stored, its there to stay. What if you posted something you regret posting. How would you be able to invalidate that post. You do own your private key and could “update” the earlier post. We have to think of ways for people to really control their own data. A new “version” of that post should overwrite the earlier one for example.
- What if there is unsolicited content posted and nobody can act against it.
- What if really secure messaging is used for terrorism.
- How to handle spam and scammers
These are all legit questions and many more can be thought of. Technical solutions would be needed to address these kind of questions. For example; The technical creator of this decentralised Twitter service could add a voting mechanism where if the majority votes for deletion, the post will be deleted. People can see this as a form of censorship but its up to the creator of this decentralised service to take some form of responsibility and think of solutions for this (or not).
who’s responsibility is it?
Who’s responsibility is it to enable arbitrary capabilities to delete messages or invalidate data in relations to how Blockchain works? The Blockchain technology creator? The application provider using Blockchain for their service or the end-user? Maybe no-one. Maybe Blockchain is not the perfect use case for this type of service as-is.
