There is an interesting evolution taking place, pushed by Elon Musk and Twitter.
Since he took over the social media platform, information was released concerning the behind the scenes activities that led to banning and censorship. Musk came in promising free speech but we know that is impossible.
Twitter is a centralized platform and people do not want free speech. Sure, they claim they do yet the second something appears that they disagree with, they want it gone. Whether it is called fake news, conspiracy theories, or hate speech, someone wants it removed.
When it comes to centralized systems, governments have a great deal of power. This means that those entities operating under those jurisdictions have to play by those rules. There is really no way around it.
In the end, Musk can proclaim free speech all he wants. If there is something that someone with power wants gone, he will ultimately have to oblige.
Perhaps he is trying to get ahead of the curve with this.
It was announced that Twitter will now be labeling tweets. The claim is to help the safety of the network by placing labels on tweets that violate the terms of service. This is done to ensure that these remain low ranked and do not receive visibility. It also is a step to offer more transparency.
When I hear labeling, I cannot help but to think this is going to be something that is to feed the Elon Musk machine learning engine. Twitter is a treasure chest of data and he acquired a great deal of it. His interest in artificial intelligence is well documented. Labeling is a way to accelerate the machine learning. Nevertheless, that will be the topic of an upcoming article.
The challenge for Twitter is that it has a terms of service. Again, it has to adhere to standards set down for them. It does not allow for the company to allow any content.
After all, Twitter could be ordered to take information down. More importantly, the company has the ability to do so. Therefore, regardless of what is posted, it only remains at the discretion of Twitter. While Musk might have changed the practices from the previous regime, he still retains the ability to wipe out accounts.
Trying to make information ranked low so as to reduce visibility is much different than removing the information altogether.
We often talk about Web 3.0, and Hive specifically, as being censorship resistant. This was the entire premise behind blockchain. The introduction of Bitcoin brought us the idea of monetary transactions that could not be altered or reversed. Nor could they be prohibited.
This concept has extended out, especially on Hive that can store text data. That means whatever is placed on-chain is basically immutable and censorship resistant. We can see how this differs from what is on Twitter. No matter what front ends do with the data, it is still there for everyone to read on a block explorer such as Hiveblocks.
Recent announcements regarding the SpkNetwork show how this is being expanded. That system is being designed to extend this premise to photos, audio, and video. We are going to be offered this option regardless of the media format.
Here is where we decentralized (or distributed) computing applied. This is the formation of decentralized cloud. Again, most of what we post on the Internet is at the peril of either the application (platform) of the hosting company. Not only will the front end have their own terms of service, so does an entity such as Amazon.
We begin to see how controlled the Internet truly is.
The foundation of Web 3.0 mirrors what Satoshi Nakamoto brought forth in the Bitcoin white paper. From there, we saw the idea of a system constructed that was outside the reach of the established players. The focus there was payments. However, with the expansion of data that can be stored, we can see how we are repeating the process.
Satoshi was mostly focused upon the banks. The goal was to create a monetary system they did not control. Bitcoin introduced the decentralized ledger that was open to anyone while solving the double spend problem.
Hive could be framed in the same light. Instead of the banks, although there is that aspect to the [ecosystem](@leoglossary/leoglossary-ecosystem-digital0, it sought to provide a forum outside the reach of AWS. It decentralized text storage.
Fortunately, the last few years were spent focusing upon the scaling capabilities of the network. Now we see other sidechain projects that seek to take this to another level.
Decentralized cloud brings an entirely new model to the table. What happens when the exclusivity of the silos is broken? How do things change when anyone can post an article, video, or podcast without fear of removal?
This is obviously a major step beyond what Musk is doing. He is still playing around in the Web 2.0 realm. For him, there is no interest in Web 3.0. In fact, he will likely make tens of billions more in that arena.
Web 3.0 is slow to emerge because it is being built from the ground up. This is an entirely different way of housing data. Does that mean everything will convert to this? Not at all. There is a lot of data that belongs on centralized databases.
However, what we are seeing is the opportunity to decentralize that which is required. This means that freedom of speech, censorship, and political games are altered completely.
Today, the separation of money and "speech" is eliminated. After all, it is really nothing more than data.
And that is what Satoshi introduced more than a decade ago. The entire foundation of Bitcoin was regarding who controlled the data.
Technology is just taking this further out.
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