Freedom of the Web…But Not Entirely
https://www.wired.com/story/decentralized-social-networks-sound-great-too-bad-theyll-never-work/
Deleting our social media accounts may be more problematic and less liberating than we’d like to romanticize. The article “Decentralized Social Networks Sound Great. Too Bad They’ll Never Work” by Chelsea Barabas explains the complex relationship between users and social media sites, and the efforts to help them evolve–or in this case, devolve. Social networking mega-platforms such as Facebook allow users to link their accounts with other social media apps such as Instagram, Tinder, and Spotify, making these apps difficult to use if a user were to suspend or delete Facebook altogether. Since Facebook’s inception in 2004, the site has become a corporate giant, with over 20,000 employees and a net income of over 10 billion. However, as online social networks grow, our lack of control over our information shrinks. Our information is subject to government surveillance, data aggregation, online predators, and general public viewing. In an effort to reclaim our internet privacy, some users are turning to “de-centralized” networks, sites free of corporate control and home to content users can post “directly in a user-friendly decentralized fashion.”
However, Barabas concludes by saying that returning to de-centralized networks would be quite the challenge. One of the main reasons the author attributed to the difficulty of de-centralization is because people tend to participate in social media platforms because their friends are participating in them, too. It’s less likely that we would transition to de-centralized sites just because we believe in their mission. In addition, de-centralized networks don’t have the kind of security and safety provisions that large, corporate-controlled networks such as Google have. Lastly, large social media networks make more economic sense. Barabas explains that “network effects, which make larger platforms more useful,” provide for a “recipe of consolidation,” making it “cheaper to acquire resources like storage and bandwidth in bulk.” Barabas recommends that if de-centralized networks are to succeed, they need to be created with antidotes to these three factors in mind.
Barabas’ article relates back to our discussion of social networks. When we looked at a graph of Facebook in class, we could see an uncountable number of nodes (representing Facebook users) with edges (representing Facebook friendships) to sometimes 10’s or 100’s of friends. This article discusses the scaling back of such networks, which seems unthinkable to us now that we have established such widespread and commonly used social networks. On the other hand, if users and their closest friends established de-centralized social networking platforms, the ties between nodes would become stronger because users would be interacting with fewer people they have weak ties with and more people with which they have stronger ties.
Net neutrality is a basic need now. Here in India MaxCure Hospitals supported the campaign on net neutrality in time of facebook try to take control.