The Web 3.0 and Hive dilemas

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criptocu

Bitcoin, crypto, evolving human being...

10 months ago

In community: Everything Crypto(f12e)

Topics: Cryptocurrency, Crypto, Finance, Investment, Web3, ...

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In a centralized social network, the CEO who determines the rules that must be followed within the platform. Of course, since the social network belongs to an entity that must submit to the local laws where it operates, the rules have to follow the line of action that those laws draw for them. These obligations stand in contrast to the freedom offered by Web 3.0 and Hive in particular, though this also presents a dilemma.

On this subject and more I will deepen throughout this article. If you are interested in learning about the dilemma of Web 3.0 and Hive, I invite you to read carefully. Let's get started!

Web 2.0 and traditional social networks

Web 2.0 has been with us for a while, in fact, it is the natural habitat of almost all of humanity with internet access nowadays. However, it does raise a major issue or ethical question for certain groups of people, and that is that people have no privacy or control over their data.

The drawbacks of Web 2.0

Each Web 2.0 platform is an independent island, in that sense and being very technical, it could be said that it is a decentralized network. However, each of these islands is a private database that does not interact with each other, each one controlled by an entity (the company that owns said platform).

To access each platform you will need to register individually in each of them and therefore have a different username and password.

As I mentioned at the beginning, each entity has the ability to decide what is done on its platform, what is allowed and what is not, and what to do with the data generated there. This data generated by users through their published content and interactions is mostly sold to third parties.

They are sold because along with ads they are the main sources of revenue for the companies that control the platforms. The user has no control over it.

In the same way, each platform has the right to block or censor certain users and certain content at their convenience. This limits the freedom of each user to do or say what they want, but there's not much a user can do either. From the moment you register on these platforms, you accept the terms and conditions, assigning the right and accepting the authority of the platform over your data and profile.

In general, in Web 2.0 a user can monetize their content if it meets certain requirements and parameters and also submits to certain rules about the type of content to generate.

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is considered the next step in the evolution of Internet, it began to be mentioned with the rise of cryptocurrencies and its decentralized systems. Many think that the foundation of this new generation of the web will be blockchains, although technically this is not required.

Basically the central idea is decentralization, the design of Web 3.0 demands that groups or individual people run nodes around the world allowing anyone to interact and build on them.

As in Web 2.0, Web 3.0 is not a single platform, it is a set of systems that may or may not be independent of each other. Another element to take into account is that the third version of the Internet has no owner.

Perhaps for some it is a dilemma to define what Web 3.0 is, since it is still being built and the level reached is barely a fraction of the potential it can have. Of course, a fundamental aspect and in which many seem to agree is monetization through tokenization. Not only providing independence from large internet corporations, but also from large banking corporations and government financial systems.

In my opinion, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 should coexist for many years; Perhaps many of the great dominant players of 2.0 will end up adopting characteristics of 3.0, but their business model should not disappear.

Hive in Web 3.0

From Stock Images by @iodacasamia

Hive is part of Web 3.0, it's one of those platforms that make it up. For its part, Hive has a system that supports the development of all Web 2.0 functionalities (social networks, forums, blogs, wikis, etc.) and also has its own economy.

Hive provides unique solutions to many of the technical and consensus issues faced by many other communities. To know more about this platform you can read this article Hive Blockchain: The Complete Guide for New Users || Tutorial by @victoriabsb.

In particular, from now on I will focus on some of the dilemmas that, in my opinion, are posed to Hive (and Web 3.0) and to refute some approaches that have been given.

The dilemma of Hive and Web 3.0

Hive is decentralized, immutable and resistant to censorship, these are some of the pillars on which the relevance of the platform is sustained. So where is the dilemma?
For me they are divided into two points.

Point 1. Characteristics of Hive that can lead to abuse.

Hive is censorship resistant, that's an undeniable reality. No one will be able to block your account or prohibit you from commenting or posting what you want. All users benefit from it, even those who do not have the best intentions.

Due to this feature, there is no effective control means to prevent hateful content, extreme violence, child abuse, or to block those who incite it.

While it is true that interfaces can limit the display of this kind of information, either by muting it or hiding it in their UIs, it will always be available on the blockchain. There is no way to prevent that image of a minor being sexually abused from being recorded on the blockchain without Hive's immutability condition disappearing.

And in the same way it is not possible to prevent communities of this type from being created, even if 99.9% want it. Again, immutability would have to be removed, and here's one of Hive's main dilemmas.

Another case is that of the trolls. It is true that there is the possibility of muting to prevent notifications of harassing or mocking messages from reaching us, but we cannot prevent downvotes from reaching us.

The downvote function is understandable in the current Hive schema. It is used to penalize and prevent those who commit plagiarism from monetizing or those who, as in the previous case, generate unwanted content (but they rarely care about monetization). However, it can have the negative effect of people who do everything right being trolled or hated with a Hive Power high.

Perhaps a penalty system where there are no downvotes, such as a blacklist, where all those included in it are unable to monetize within Hive would be more convenient.

Point 2. The promotion of Hive attributing virtues that it does not have.

How many times have you heard that in Hive you are in control and you own your data? I a few.

In Hive you are:

Protected against censorship.
You participate in a decentralized system where general rules and decisions are made jointly through consensus.

But in Hive you don't have control over your data.

I hope you haven't jumped right into the comments to rebut me without first letting me explain why I'm saying what I'm saying.

In Hive there is a limit to what you can do with your content once you have published it. Once you do an action (comment, vote, follow another user, etc.) and it is written to the blockchain, it cannot be deleted. Nor can you delete your account once you have created it.

In this sense, you do not own your data, once you publish something it belongs to the blockchain and to the entire ecosystem until the end of time.

Again, in Web 2.0 the company that owns the platform where you interact can take all the interaction data you generate and sell it. In Web 3.0 and Hive, anyone can take the engagement data you generate, analyze it, and sell it.

If you had forgotten, the blockchain is decentralized and it is public. So anyone with the necessary technical knowledge can create algorithms to analyze user interactions on the blockchain, generate data and sell it.

To you who have read me, I would like that from now on when talking about Hive and promoting it, you would take this point into account. Highlight the virtues it has, but don't attribute those it doesn't

Final notes

The dilemmas of Hive and Web 3.0 are there, I just mentioned some of them that I have thought about the most. However, I think that, if we put everything on a scale compared to the characteristics of traditional social networks, in terms of freedoms, our Hive wins by a lot.