Is SocialFi the Answer to the Pain Points of Web2?

While the social media of Web2 has delivered popular, easy-to-use one-stop shops for mass online social interaction, we lost some of the magic of the old-school peer-to-peer message boards and content sharing applications along the way. Censorship resistance, free speech, user control, data rights, privacy, security, and imbalanced economics all traded in for the convenience of giant centralized platforms with flashy UIs and an addictive experience. Data became the lifeblood of the modern global economy, and users offered up as the product.

The corporate entity control of major centralized social media sites and the relatively small group of people who set the platform rules raises concerns regarding free speech and censorship among users. As we have repeatedly seen over recent years, governing bodies can be influenced to silence certain high-profile users or groups while favoring narratives of the influencers. While some believe banning dangerous messaging is the right of any private platform to protect its users; who decides whether or not messages are dangerous? Is there an external influence on such decision-making? Does that run contrary to the ideals of free speech in a world where public discourse is increasingly held online with so few mainstream options available?

Well-documented hacks, privacy abuses, and data breaches also continue to pose severe risks to users. Concerns over the control and security of personal data held by centralized entities have led to increasingly strict regulation, particularly in Europe. While arguably improving privacy, transparency, and security standards, these regulations also come at a cost to businesses, solidifying the monopoly of these global corporations and making it harder for new disruptors to challenge their position. Centralized social media platforms still retain control over data and content, extracting almost all of the value it provides from users, without the incentive to share with those who create it, and subjecting them to invasive advertising models.

Decentralizing Social Media

Decentralized social networks can provide an answer to these pain points, operating on independently run servers all over the world where the value created is transparently shared with its users. 

They provide users with control over the rights to, and value of, their own data and content. They foster independence without a central authority that delivers censorship resistance, freedom of speech, and true ownership over personal data that no single group can interfere with via tokenized user incentives.

They can also provide an answer to data privacy and security, enabling users to create accounts without linking to their real-world identities and rely on public-key cryptography for account security rather than a single centralized entity.

A Blockchain-Based Solution

With such advancements in blockchain technology, the SocialFi fusion of social media and finance and the potential of Web3 promises to return users’ proprietary rights over their own data, content, and profits back to them, offering censorship-resistant and immutable data features, secure file storage, thread creation, and chat options, as well as content monetization opportunities. That’s where myMessage comes in.

myMessage is a decentralized Reddit-like social media platform and data portal for Web3 applications. Its data storage and messaging dApp solution will run on a multi-chain structure using quantum-resistant encryption, supported by the Zilliqa, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon networks. The Reddit-like thread-reply bulletin board will also be built on Polygon’s low-cost, high-speed layer 2 blockchain technology, having been awarded a development grant from the network.

The myMessage Reddit-like protocol will enable users to create verifiable content on a decentralized blockchain-based platform offering immutable and censorship-resistant data storage, quantum resistant security encryption, multi-chain interoperable and scalable architecture, evolving Web3 applications, and incentive rewards for using the platform.

Powered by its native MESA tokens, holders can post encrypted, privacy-enhancing threads, replies, and comments on the decentralized social media platform by utilizing myMessage middleware. Users can tip each other in MESA tokens for their content and enjoy farming rewards simply by socializing. It returns both the proprietary rights and value generated back to users and establishes myMessage at the forefront of SocialFi adoption.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The content was purely for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.

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