If you ask any person what the Internet is, they will answer without uncertainty with one of these three things:
- Any social network (FaceBook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc.).
- The banking application to be able to transfer funds from one account to another;
- Google (as a search engine)
All the answers we can consider valid, but they do not represent the internet, they are applications that exploit the internet.
As we know, the internet is the ability to connect multiple computers to each other through the telephone cable.
Let's go back to social and, why not, even Google.
If it were possible to have the decentralization of the internet, each of us would have full power of our actions.
No central power would have the right to censor any externalization (always and in any case with decorum and respect for others).
In this regard, I smile when I think of the event that happened to a friend of mine who was fiddling with Facebook: he was scrolling through the images in his gallery, to change the one in his profile, and inadvertently selected an image that portrayed a Balilla with the Roman salute (children aged between 8 and 14 years of the fascist period).
The image was not to the liking of the Facebook bot and was suspended for a few hours: the suspension should have lasted 60 days.
Following explanations, the penalty was cancelled from him.
This fact to explain that centralization does not give people a way to take responsibility for what they make public.
Fortunately, however, some socials are coming to the forefront that, by leveraging the blockchain, are creating a decentralized structure.
Let me explain.
These social networks such as My/Your/Our/Your Publish0x, Steemit, Hive, give their members the possibility to produce any kind of content (always respecting others) without censorship.
On the contrary, they apply censorship when, rightly, the contents are not the actual property of the author.
Be careful though: since everything is written on the blockchain, the site managers cannot delete anything at all, the only one who can intervene in this sense is the account holder.
A few months ago, I published an article where I called personal data the gold of the III millennium.
Here in this topic Google pops up.
As soon as we signed up for an account with the renowned Mountain View company, we practically handed them the keys to our lives.
What we like, where we go, what we eat, when we're home, when we're out... basically we have no secrets.
What's more, after they get hold of certain data, they also ask us the sibylline question: do you want advertising to be generic or targeted to your habits/choices?
If we answer this question, here they can deliberately sell our referrals to companies that might provide us with items or services that we might like.
Basically, just as with social our externals are not ours because someone decides if they are inconvenient or not, our preferences and habits are no longer ours.
Let's take a step back and talk about decentralized social.
These socials, also give the possibility to earn money.
On one condition.
However.
The condition is that the content is original (fruit of your intelligence) and, above all, quality.
This introduces the concept of meritocracy.
A natural concept but that lately is seen as a burden and a difficulty.
Bul***t!
If my articles didn't have quality content it would be right that no one would pull them: I would learn to understand and improve.
Improving more and more until every post of mine gets all the tips it can get.
With this I want to thank all these social because they give the opportunity to all people like me to be able to improve and compare themselves with others.
Grow, learn something new, and research new insights and topics.
Speaking of decentralization: could bitcoin become a decentralized safe-haven asset? I leave you to the video ...
