This post is the culmination of many private and public conversations I've had with several people over the last 6 months. The public conversations are there in the open if you care to go dig for them. The private ones I will protect with my dying breath if needed. Those personal opinions run the full spectrum of the subject and I can not and will not reveal their identities. So do not ask me their identities. I may break this up into several related posts because I have a lot to say about the subject.
I am also anticipating a lot of hate coming my way for saying some of these things. But I'm pretty thick skinned and can handle more than my fair share of personal attacks and comments. I am also expecting to be downvoted for saying these things. But they need to be said. So if I suddenly disappear from your favorite front end. You will always be able to go to my blog (powered by 
Web3 has an identity crisis that needs to be solved NOW! The term Web3 has been hijacked and is being bastardized by clowns whose sole purpose is to make money. Once again human greed has taken control of something and destroyed it. This time it hasn't even gotten started yet. I'm just glad this is happening now before Hive gets some major mass adoption.
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There are way too many different definitions to the term Web3 it's self. To some it means individual user sovereignty. To others it is the good old fashioned web as it stands but uses crypto currency. Still others it just means being federated. Some think that its just simply being decentralized. But that term has been hijacked and bastardized as well. There really is no general acceptance as to what either of those two terms actually mean.
Lets start with the simple definition of "decentralized"
You can see the top two Google results are in fact actual real definitions
If you read those they at least agree that it is to be used as a verb and is some form of separation of powers. Most commonly government or administrative powers. So we can ascertain that the term is correct and agree that is the case. But in the context of Web3 what is being decentralized. Is it the user? Is it the websites used on the web? Is it both?
Web3 doesnt appear on any search results for a definition and only returns results linking to stories and posts on crypto currency related websites. There is however a result for it on Wikipedia which also states that it is blockchain related. Which is where the confusion starts. Because Web3 is more than blockchain and it is certainly more than crypto currency.
If it's the user, what ensures the user is free? Many say this is where blockchain comes in. I can see how it does. Blockchain ensures that each user has some kind of vote, a digital voice and a digital identity that is worth something. Being a blockchain there is inherently a currency with a value attached to it. This is how value is given to a persons digital voice. Since there is this value that is attached to that voice the more value is now equal to more power that is held by that person. This is wrong on so many different levels. Every ones voice has a right to be heard. And every ones vote should remain equal. Especially if it is for the governance of the blockchain. Personally I would love to see the "currency" side of Hive separated from the vote side. I know it's probably not possible. But what if there was a set weight given to a governance vote that wasn't tied to HP?
Hive is very similar to real life. The ones who have the money have the power. The ones who do not have none. I get that. I understand that. But it's not right that if someone with a small amount of power voices an opposing viewpoint to a whale who then retaliates and down votes that low powered individual into oblivion. Their voice is just as equally important as the whale's. Just because a person is wealthy doesn't mean their opinion is worth more than somebody whose isn't. Your opinion is yours and you have no right to overpower another that opposes you.
It's even worse when a circle jerk of whales gang up on someone to essentially delete them from Hive. It goes completely against what I understand to be the core philosophy of Web3 and Hive, Individual sovereignty.
Then you add in that I've heard that some whales are "taking new users under their wings" and telling them who and what content to vote for. In return they will ensure these new users get massive upvotes from them and their circle of friends. While I understand what is happening and they may actually have good intentions this is wrong. It's nothing more than racketeering and ends up giving fuel to the fire of the people from outside of Hive saying that Web3 is a lie and a ponzi scheme. Because when it comes to this kind of bull shit it does nothing to advance the idea of Web3 and only feeds your individual pocket books.
If you are a whale and currently doing this I beg of you to stop. You are destroying the perception of Web3 for the future generations. It's not a get rich quick scheme. If that is your end goal please find something else to do. I hear on Twitter that there is a different "first social media blockchain" nearly daily. Go try that on one of those.
But if your real intention is to help new users try doing all this "taking people under your wing" out in the open. Do it in a community. Maybe create a token like so many other communities have. You can still keep it tight and gate keep the people you let in. Make it an elite club if you wish. Just remember that most people dont really care about your power or wealth. They may envy those, hell I envy those!. But many, including me, only care about your actions.
Your actions say way more than your power or wealth ever could.
If it's the websites, how are they decentralized if they are built and served by databases? Are databases not a collection of centralized data? Hive itself is essentially a database. But is all out there in the open for anybody to see. That is the beauty of it. Nothing in it is hidden. Of course you have to know how to read it. But its there none the less for any enterprising individual to go look. But the databases I'm referring to are the ones that not. The ones that contain private user info, KYC and requires a user to put a certain level of trust into it in order to use the website. They track where you are on a page, how long you were there, where your mouse was at, where you accessed it from, etc. No matter if their intentions are good and they only want to provide you with a better experience that information is still collected and stored in a database that if stolen can be accessed by bad actors who can then build a profile on you.
In full disclosure The Fediverse was my first foray into being "decentralized" and is what naturally led me to Hive.
Now lets go little deeper. Federation or The Fediverse as its more commonly known as. Is a collection of websites that can talk to each other using a protocol such as activitypub or zot. Which is some really cool tech. But it's still not decentralized as much as they like to say they are. These websites are mostly hosted in a data center somewhere with a 24/7 connection to the web. Whose to say that hundreds if not thousands of those individual instances are in the exact same data center? What if a government or some other bad actor started seizing those physical servers? Now your data is in jeopardy. So not very decentralized after all.
The great thing about the fediverse is that most of those sites have pretty low resource requirements and you can host your own on your own personal server in your home or even carry it with you. (I can explain how to do that if you want. But that's a different subject than this article)
Don't get me wrong. You can host your own Hive node and even be a witness if you can afford it and maintain it. But it's not something that most people can do. It requires a considerable amount of money, hardware and time to maintain it. Doing the Fediverse dapps are considerably cheaper on the monetary side but just the same on the technical side.
But as I mentioned already the problem with The Fediverse is that it's basically the old web just split up. And since most people dont know how or cant afford to host their own, they are still back to the same problem of putting their data and trust in someone else. Plus there is no individual sovereignty and no way to guarantee the identity of a user. A users account can be hacked using the current methods that are in play today.
So what I would love to see is a meeting of the developers of Hive, all the witnesses and other blockchains come together and come up with some kind of agreement on what exactly Web3 is. No companies, corporations or exchanges would be involved. This needs to be an agreement between people for people. No discussion about this blockchain or that blockchain. We need something like, for lack of a better term, the Bill of Rights for Web3.
Believe me I am not trying to be political here. I'm just stating that we are on the edge of a new frontier and this digital world is running rampant with people who will trample on others to make a quick buck. And it needs to stop! This is not something we are building for ourselves. We are building Web3 for those who come after us. We have to come together and define these terms now before we let others define them for us.
Because if we let them define us it will be for their gain and not ours.
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