Decentralization of tech and social media is the only way for humanity to freely communicate publicly online. Any kind of centralization within the system that runs social media sites will become an attack vector for malicious actors seeking to control or insert biases into the free flow of information. By using and supporting truly decentralized social media, we help to free humanity and to directly support the right to freedom of speech.
The Hive blockchain is easily the most advanced and reliable decentralized blockchain and social network on the internet, yet the majority of people have never even heard of it - why is that?
One of the main reasons why Hive is metaphorically one of the internet's 'best kept secrets' is not that Hive is a secret, but because it is actively suppressed by forces who do not want humanity to find it's voice and to freely expose truth on a global scale. The takeover and suppression of Steem by Justin Sun that led to the creation of Hive several years ago, was an example of this in action.
How Free Should Speech Be?
Any attempt to shut down free speech is a form of crime against humanity. It doesn't matter whether you personally are convinced that what is being said is 'dangerous' or not, attempts to stifle free speech are always dangerous since communication is part of how we meet our needs.
Even if a person is freely sharing the recipe to make nuclear weapons, which might seem to be the most dangerous words a person could speak - by trying to shut them down, we declare ourselves 'fit' to silence such people and you are participating in a hoarding of information and power for yourself. In this example, the censor is actually hoarding the most dangerous weapons on Earth, which gives them an ultimate form of power over others - so who is really the threat here? The liberator of information or the hoarder of that same information?
No-one can objectively prove themselves to be fit to hold power over others since for any given moment where overpowering has taken place, there is no way to know if the outcome would have been better another way. We cannot live the same moment twice. People can claim that they are right to hold power over others and they usually do this by smearing the reputation of others in some way and this is another reason why free speech is so necessary - everyone needs to be heard in their responses to such claims.
So the only way to stand a chance of allowing a healthy balance of power is to ensure that all voices are heard, all people are acknowledged and this requires that we can freely share information. This means that free speech is one of the absolutely most fundamental requirements for human survival since survival requires us to each have enough power to survive.
If Your Social Media Site Isn't Truly Decentralized Then You Aren't Free
There is no question that Web 2.0 social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are heavily preventing free speech, they have said so in their own leaked documents for years - they have planned to do so for a long time. Their 'argument' (to themselves) is that 'people can't be trusted with free speech' - this is a quote from a leaked Google document. This alone proves clearly why the Hive blockchain and Web 3.0 decentralization are so needed, so powerful and yet so likely to be censored themselves.
It is no surprise that ALL of the 'truth' based social networks that claim to allow free speech, have since censored and removed certain people from their networks - often including some of the same medical Doctors who had been previously removed from standard Web 2.0 sites (Doctors who were doing little more than sharing their insights and evidence on controversial topics).
ANY centralization within social media sites allows those involved to censor people, period.
Is Hive Really Decentralized? What About Blurt?
It's true that Hive enables stakeholders to downvote posts and this does cause problems from time to time. However, those problems are much less than the problems caused by the covert and overt manipulation that has taken place on Web 2.0 sites for many years. The saving grace for Web 3.0 sites such as Hive is that the communities can fork the project if they want to and start their own one to escape any bad actors.
Blurt is a project that was forked from Hive, apparently in response to the downvoting that was taking place on Hive. Some Blurt users have thrown mud at Hive, saying that Hive's model doesn't support free speech, but ironically, the fact that Blurt exists is a testimony to the way that Hive DOES support free speech.
The fact that Blurt could be forked from Hive means that the freedom of Hive is so free that you can literally take the whole thing and make your own version without paying anyone. The means of manifesting freedom of speech are freely gifted to the planet by Hive. Blurt does not support downvoting but has yet to truly resolve the issues that downvoting is meant to solve on Hive. It's great to experiment and whichever system works best at scale may be adopted by both systems in the end.
What's Next For Hive and Web 3.0 Social Media?
As many people have pointed out, a next big step for the Hive eco-system is to allow layer 2 communities to more easily be created. We also need to have simple ways for layer 2 communities to be forked, so that if bad actors try to derail them, we can mimic what took place in the founding of Hive (to remove Justin Sun's influence from Hive) and simply move the layer 2 Hive community to a new community account and new layer 2 token - minus the bad actors.
If anything, this feature should be seen as a kind of reflection of the nexus point that led to the creation of Hive initially. Being able to repeat the process of forking on layer 2 should be seen as a celebratory feature of Hive that reminds us of our power and freedom. Not only the freedom to speak freely, but also the freedom of association that allows us to choose who we interact with, entirely for our own reasons.
Easy creation and forking of layer 2 communities may prove to be one of the final key pieces in the creation of the world's first indestructible free speech engine - don't miss your chance to be part of the process!
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