Decentagram: A Decentralised Social Media Using Blockchain
Keywords:
Cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, social media platforms, Bitcoin, smart contractsAbstract
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to meet someone who does not share at least a small portion of their life online. 3.53 billion people were active users of social media as of July. This is 45% of the world's population, and the quota rises over the threshold for individuals with internet access which is 80%. Such capillary entry into people's daily activities indicates the ability of large social media businesses to integrate advertising with surgical accuracy and great financial results. The revenue was $27 billion or so in only 2021. These businesses gain from the promise to sell users' data to advertisers to offer highly tailored advertisements. Users' privacy is seriously threatened by social networks' intrusion into their virtual life, which leaves them open to malevolent manipulation and behaviour influence. The “Cambridge Analytica” incident exposed how 50 million oblivious Facebook users' information were collected to build an algorithm that might sway US votes through precise political advertising. If, on the one hand, the lack of editorial oversight and the unreliability of users permit the dissemination of inaccurate and damaging information, on the other side, the right to information is jeopardized by the centralization of data management and storage. Additionally, there are several instances of social media being shut down or manipulated to suppress protests around the world, such as the recent protests in Hong Kong. Social networks are plagued by data breaches in addition to other issue such as fake news and the presence of phoney account bots. This study examines how Blockchain technology can be utilized to change the social media platform through transparent policies, value redistribution, ownership control, decentralization of data, and avoiding censorship by analysing 40 developing platforms.
References
Adikari S, Dutta K. Identifying fake profiles in linkedin. arXiv preprint. Jun 2020. Available at: ttps://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2006.01381.
Conti M, Poovendran R, Secchiero M. Fakebook: Detecting fake profiles in on-line social networks. 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining. Istanbul, Turkey. 2012, Aug 26–29. (pp. 1071–1078). DOI: 10.1109/ASONAM.2012.185.
Fire M, Katz G, Elovici Y. Strangers intrusion detection-detecting spammers and fake profiles in social networks based on topology anomalies. Human Journal. Jan 2012; 1(1): 26–39.
Guidi B, Michienzi A. The decentralization of social media through the blockchain technology. 13th ACM Web Science Conference 2021. 2021, Jun 21 (pp. 138–139). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3462741.3466680.
Narayanan LK, Muralidharan RR, Sampathkumar R, Gururajan I, Subbiah P. Blockchain based fictitious detection in social media. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR 2021). 2022 Feb 22 (pp. 226–236). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Lax G, Russo A, Fascì LS. A Blockchain-based approach for matching desired and real privacy settings of social network users. Information Sciences. May 2021; 557: 220–235.
Agrawal R, Gupta N, editors. Transforming cybersecurity solutions using blockchain. Springer; Apr 2021.
Gurajala S, White JS, Hudson B, Matthews JN. Fake Twitter accounts: Profile characteristics obtained using an activity-based pattern detection approach. Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Social Media & Society. 2015, Jul 27. pp. 1–7.
Murimi R. On sharing preferences in social networks. Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute. 2018. pp. 1121–1131.
Morris MR, Teevan J, Panovich K. What do people ask their social networks, and why? A survey study of status message Q&A behavior. Decentagram: A decentralised social media using blockchain. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2010, Apr 10. pp. 1739–1748.
Zhang K, Kizilcec R. Anonymity in social media: Effects of content controversiality and social endorsement on sharing behavior. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. May 2014; 8(1): 643–646. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v8i1.14573.
Swan M. Blockchain thinking: The brain as a decentralized corporation [commentary]. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. 2015; 34(4): 41–52. DOI: 10.1109/MTS.2015.2494358.
