ADSactly Tech News - Is Facebook Destined to be Replaced With DAO Blockchain Alternatives?
ADSactly Tech News: Is Facebook Destined to be Replaced With DAO Blockchain Alternatives?
There is change brewing in technological societies across the globe. The decentralized nature of blockchain and the new innovation taking place with distributed ledgers is slowly creating a paradigm shift in the way we solve problems. But I'm getting ahead of myself... Why does any of it matter?
Well this has been a real focus of discussion recently in ADSactly and more specifically the effect it is having on our fundamental understanding of value. We have had many conversations revolving around the idea that value doesn't have to be centralized and that direct exchange of value is much more beneficial to both parties than having exchanges go through a middleman and then result in less for the two people actually exchanging value in the first place.
This is a great place to work from in terms of a case study so I have decided to use Facebook as an example of centralization and the way it handles the dispersement of value.
Technologies such as Blockchain and the distributed ledger are enabling further decentralization and distribution of organizations. Both the workforce and consumers are now keen to move away from the centralized and hierarchical structures towards transparent and inclusive approaches, which give people more choice and control on how to get things done.
The main idea in the paragraph above is that blockchain and distributed ledger technologies have the potential to offer people more choice and control in how they do things on a day to day basis. I'm not sure but to me that sounds like more freedom. Freedom is good so we should definitely push for that as a community!
Now, when we put the spotlight on large corporations and ask the question, how are corporations enabling choice and control in consumers. The answer is, they are not, that is the exact opposite goal for most large multinational corporations. They need us dependent upon them. That's how they grow and expand, if we don't need them and use them, they cease to exist.
There have been many recent concerns when it comes to centralized organizations like Facebook, Apple and Google (now Alphabet, Inc.), that along with Amazon and Netflix form what are referred to as FANGs.
An acronym for these high-performing technology stocks, the FANGs have accounted for some spectacular investor returns over the past year (notwithstanding the weakness lately in Facebook’s stock price), as well as representing a hefty percentage of the overall market capitalization of the U.S stock market.
So if these 'FANGs' are getting the lion share of market capitalization and all the money is moving behind their cause we need to ask, is that good? Are people getting their money's worth from these organizations, are they helping us to have better lives. Yes I know I'm being naive because when did the persuit of money ever get formally attached to helping people have better lives? Well, it should in my opinion but there are a lot of people who would disagree with me certainly!
The stock price of each FANG company increased by more than 30% last year, which provided a shot in the arm the S&P 500 and helped it record a near 20% gain. That said, the Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratios of the FANG stocks were looking a wee bit frothy as of late this March.
While Amazon.com traded at a P/E of 327, Netflix was on a P/E of 210 at late last month. And, Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet, who have been linked with privacy concerns, were trading at valuations near 52-week lows.
Well there is certainly a case to be made when it comes to large multinational companies getting incredible amounts of investment and therefore being granted huge powers over transforming society!
But if people are paying attention, just the fact that I'm discussing this topic means that there is public scrutiny into what is going on with this here... In fact these mega tech behemoths have created distrust in users when they examine the power they have been able to amass and what they use it for!
Well they have a good reason to be concerned especially with situations like the Cambridge Analytica debacle where the world learned organizations have been able to extract private information from the accounts of around 50 million Facebook users!
So what are people so concerned about then? Well it is a bit scary when you think about corporations and governments vacuming up personal information conducting mass data collection. Where do they get all that data from anyways? Well they get it from the FANGs! We give them the information knowingly but in most cases unknowingly... Remember that little terms of service agreement you clicked a box on? The one that had the really small print that would have taken you hours and legal help to understand? What did you do? You just clicked the box and moved forward right? Yah well that is how they get us...
As a result of recent scandals there are tons of privacy and data ownership advocacies emerging... Many are now speaking out and the message is loud and clear, many believe that centralized and hierarchical corporate structures are not agile enough for today’s business environment. Can organizations adapt? If they can't they will fade away and be replaced by a new paradigm... Change doesn't wait for anyone.
Blockchain and decentralized services now challenge these centralized authorities. And, their endeavors are finding support from an increasingly discerning market. On the more progressive end, decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs for short, have also figured in the discussion of organizational structures. For example, initiatives in the shape of Dash, Digix, Slock.it, and The DAO have been met with varying degrees of success. Upcoming efforts like DAOstack, which is described as a “decentralized framework for decentralized organizations” and based in Israel, is seeking to seek to lower the barriers to founding DAOs.
I do believe that DAO is going to be the way forward for organizations and those that adapt more quickly will have a headstart! Guess what, if you are reading this and a member of the ADSactly server, you are part of a DAO already!
So lets look at some data to back this up shall we? Well, a recent study was conducted in which 9 in 10 (87%) of technology professionals answered that they believed blockchain technology will be as transformative for business as the Internet has been!
Beyond that there were a few other things to be learned from the study I've referred to:
1.) Privacy of data is the highest priority amongst people in IT currently;
2.) Two-thirds of respondents responding have trialled or are using blockchain technology
3.) Nearly half of respondents who have not worked with blockchain tech yet will do so in next two years.
If these findings are accurate then we are about so see some huge changes in coming months and years! Privacy is of great concern, people have used blockchain technology and people who haven't will use it in the next two years! Are you kidding me?! You are reading this article on the first blockchain based social media network! You are ahead of the pack my friend!
But wait, what is wrong with centralization? Why aren't the systems we have now good enough to build from?
Well, its unfortunate but probably human nature that plays the biggest role. It is hard to argue that corruption and greed don't play a role in influencing human decision makers... The fact is corruption and greed play a huge role and that right there is pretty close to the root of the problem. What is so interesting is the fact that blockchain and decentralized approaches represent mechanisms which can lessen potential abuses of centralized systems.
What is a DAO? A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. What does that mean? Well essentially, DAOs are run according to the rules established through blockchain smart contracts. They are transparent and the rules are set in stone so you can know what you are getting into before you make a decision to work with them.
DAOs use the decentralized and transparent nature of blockchain to function and those properties put them lightyears ahead of centralized organizations in my opinion. But that doesn't mean that they can't be changed, this was thought about and a solution was presented that keeps them fluid in nature as well. If someone wants to make changes to the governing rules, they can be achieved through consensus of peers. This is a superior model as well in my opinion to the alternative being decisions made by an individual or a small group which again may easily be influenced by corruption or greed.
Unfortunately is a very bumpy road indeed when trying to change the world for the better using a new technology that has yet to be fully tested and refined. There have already been a few mishaps in attempts to establish DAOs. However there are quite a few success stories as well. Projects like Dash have risen very high in the rankings of top cryptocurrencies securing a top 15 place and a market capitalization of around $2.5 billion. This is an example of a very successful DAO!
Slock.it, which has successfully offered smart locks tied to the blockchain, is actually the precursor to The DAO. After a successful crowdfund, its team set its sights on spinning off a decentralized venture capital fund that became The DAO. Unfortunately, The DAO met quite an unfavorable end. An error in The DAO’s smart contract code enabled a hacker to siphon peer contributions amounting to $50 million in Ether tokens. It is even doubly unlucky that The DAO used such a name. It is now hard to dissociate the ill-fated organization’s name from the innocent acronym.
There is a saying that the first one out of the gate is bound to get a little bloody and this situation with the original DAO getting hacked was almost bound to happen. People learn, they adapt and if something is worthwile they will continue to perfect it!
So what does the future hold in terms of decentralizing major organizations? Will Facebook go the way of the dinosaurs? It just may but large bohemoths like that don't go down easily so adaption will most likely be the route they attempt to take as well...
DAOs definitely have potential to evolve organizational structures, in fact, the technology has already proven its ability to enhance global cooperation and collaboration through digital platforms.
“DAOs are a new form of association, based on crypto-economic incentive at the individual level that generate large scale cooperation at the collective behavior - akin to blockchain itself but around any general goal/action,” argued Field, a PhD holder in theoretical and mathematical physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, which is located in Rehovot, just south of Tel Aviv.
What DAOs need though are lower barriers to formation and the emergence of frameworks such as turnkey solutions is essential to this. The wider availability of frameworks, resources and mechanisms would help DAOs avoid the too pitfalls encountered by previous attempts and help them focus more on solving key problems across industries.
Beyond that we may even see additional technologies combining in DAOs, technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) which would really present a potential for unprecedented automation when applied to DAOs.
So now it is time to get your opinion. How do @ADSactly members feel about decentralization? Do you think a DAO is a superior model when compared to a centralized corporation? Do you think Facebook will survive as a centralized entity or will it be forced to move over to a DAO type model eventually and the rest of the multinational corporations that exist for that matter?
Here's a chance for the @ADSactly community to leave their thoughts and opinions on this topic!
Thanks for reading.
Authored by: @techblogger
In-text citations sources:
"After Facebook's Data 'Blow-Up' Are DAOs Leveraging Blockchain's Future?" - Forbes
Image Sources:
Forbes, Pexels
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This article is really an eye opener not to fully trust a centralized authority. Nowadays, we are far worst than yesterday because of the greed of the people. Centralized has all the power to abuse us and never know what they are doing in off-camera. Mark Zuckerberg is probably aware of this matter that The DAO is the future of the internet and slowly making his move on this. It is only a matter of time before this thing is gone mainstream and the company that will embraced this blockchain will be the company far superior from anybody. Thanks for infomative blog. Really enjoyed reading it.
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@kumajin you're on the @abusereports naughty list!
If you do not stop, your account will be rendered invisible on Steemit. Bad Steemian! Bad!
What an amazing post @techblogger! I just read it in one breath. Love the topic and the idea of sharing knowledge about this. Also, thanks a lot to @adsactly for sharing it!
I think the main problem in people is that they are the victims of their routines. We are used to clicking on that terms box, and we do know that we are accepting their demands and that our private information is not private anymore then. With all that, we still click on that box like it's nothing. And then, we are not satisfied how Facebook has information about us, etc. Simply, we are the victims of our routines. If we make people change our habit of doing that, that will be an enormous step forward.
Deep inside, people are striving for freedom and to be valued. If we look how FB is working, we're not getting freedom there nor we are valued. Trust me, I have a page with 9k followers and the problems I'm getting there are really annoying and made me want to stop caring for FB and also my page, that I worked day-night for a couple of months.
I'm happy I found Steemit and that I learned that time is valuable and that decentralized system is the future. We simply need to share knowledge about this and save people from the jaws of FB, IG and other centralized platforms. I think @adsactly is a perfect society that can be on the frontier of doing that.
I think DAO is the future, and the future is here. Facebook will start to lose their members much faster as time is going.
So here are my questions.
Will Facebook start to make problems to decentralized platforms? We know FB has so much power and they can harm us a lot if they want to (That's how I feel). Or FB will realize that DAO is the future and will change its ways?
I hope they will change their ways, but somehow I don't believe they will...
I believe we are both thinking along similar lines regarding the shift that is taking place about privacy and the advantages of decentralization... People willingly sign their rights of privacy away in exchange for access to a bear trap. I've got lots of friends that have already cancelled their Facebooks but guess what, it doesn't really go away, you can just go back to the platform click a button and you'll be back online with everything as it was when you left. Creepy?
I think Facebook has already making problems by banning crypto advertisements but I suppose that was just their first move in a war that is sure to come. At the end of the day what does Facebook represent and what does Steem represent and what sort of a world do people want live in? The future is made consciously or unconsciously... I do believe there is a new wave of criticality being supported by this paradigm shift and in my opinion it couldn't come too soon! You're a very sharp guy @whack.science, I look forward to engaging with you more here! Thanks for the kind words and thoughtful comments.
I wish there was a way to speed this shift up.
I am sooo beyond ready to see Fascstbook & Twatter join the AOL disk I used to get in the mail.
I am huge supporter of Gab.ai and have been on steemit for more than a year now.
Just cannot seem to get folks to divorce themselves from those two giants.
#DuckDuckGo is also another one I support. No more Wire Hangers! Dump Google.
Yes, I know, I got one old account on FB, I can open it now in a second. LOL, yes it's kinda creepy. If you deleted it, why they don't delete it also hmmm
People just need to know about Steemit kind of platforms... The more they know the soon they will join because it is hard to resist this. I'm just worried about this war that's already begun but I hope FB will change its ways and realize this is the future... Time will tell, we just need to be a part of that group that shares knowledge, freedom, love, etc. We need to try to do our best and see what people want in the end.
Thanks for a good chat @techblogger!
Hotel California just entered my mind,
which makes me recall the nearly bankrupt state of Gibson.
So if Facebook needs an example of what can happen when
adding features that are against the wishes of very loyal customers,
Gibson might be a clear cut example.
You have said it all. Well done.
Yep,maybe. Large companies like Facebook, Google & Amazon will face a lot when Justin Sun, founder of TRON will be able to reach his goals & revolutionize the Internet. Digital era is coming & we need decentralization in every single field even in Internet.
These giant companies like Google sell our data which is worth millions of dollars to other companies & what we are getting in return? Nothing!! Just because I'm using their fuckin so called free services, they don't got the right to steal my data like what the hell I'm searching on Amazon or where the fuck I'm going today via Google Maps. They call their services free but are they really free?? This is just ridiculous!!
A new decentralized Social media platform is coming named as Sphere. They already created their product which is much like Facebook & other social media platform but it's decentralized & no one will be able to steal your data & sell it to other companies without your consent.
I loved the concept of Sphere but it's quite difficult to compete with these Giants. So, maybe Facebook & other tech companies will also create their Blockchain in future.
first of all, absolutely great and detailed post. appreciate you sharing your thoughts.
I think facebook will survive as a centralized entitiy. Not only will it survive, it may actually flourish. It has a great product and can cannibalize any new centralized innovation that happens in the social media space. It has a massive user base that no one has been able to draw it away from facebook. and as time passes, it continues to attract millions more in developing and frontier nations. It has a great first mover advantage and product and it has worked and should continue to work.
Big corporations using data is not a new thing. The cambridge analytica scandal has been blown out of proportion because people still can't digest clinton losing or brexit in the UK. what cambridge analytica did was marketing. Multi-billion dollar corporation dupe consumers into buying useless products every single day and into buying their product. Democrats and republicans were using marketing tactics to make people choose their candidates. Up until election day, democrats were fully convinced that elections are fair, and after they lost, they have been going out of their way to prove they weren't.
So cambridge analytica is not facebook's problem even if the political class wants us to think so.
Moreover, with centralized organizations, decision making is easier. a decentralized apple during steve jobs time may have been a completely different entity today than what we know of.
Lastly, i think blockchain makes transactions immutable. I am not sure if they make user data completely secure. A distributed ledger shared between nodes can be hacked at one of the nodes and data can be leaked (i am not sure if it is impossible or just difficult). please correct me on this if i am wrong. DAOs do seem to show that they can improve governance. Although, running an organization isn't always logical and programmable and should not always be democratic. this should not, however, stop the evolution of a DAO, given that more often than not, simple rules can be used to run a number of mature organizations effectively - through a democratic process as 99% of the decision making follows a standard approach.
Wow. This is a lot to digest. Thanks for the thoughtful comment here! Let me give it a shot though...
I agree... Unless an even bigger scandal rocks the boat, chances are they will get through this and come out smelling like roses.
This is true as well and will continue to be true as long as they are able to get their hands on it.
I can totally see the political spin on this and can't take a story like this at face value but using it as a starting off point to suggest a paradigm shift is just too juicy to ignore!
You are correct about the transactions being immutable (for the most part although there may be some exceptions to this?). Nodes can be hacked but on systems with DPOS a consensus model is usually quite robust so I wouldn't be worried about this potential security risk with the more robust blockchains...
Overall I feel DAO is a superior model of public or corporate governance and with this belief in mind I'll continue to learn and invest in this field. Thanks a lot for your thoughts. Very intelligent opinions and beliefs presented!
I don't think Facebook can be replaced by a blockchain alternative the entire premise of Facebook is built on the centralisation of data, its essentially a directory with a massive data warehousing program to support it.
It is built on creating feedback loops and creating pockets on the internet for echo chambers and content bias curation, thats how they are able to keep their users on and engaged for that long.
Secondly its monetization structure is all based off selling off its data to the highest bidder.
A blockchain alternative would have to function in exactly the same way but offer financial incentives like part of the ad cost back to the consumer in order to disrupt their business model
In my my mind blockchain social media like steemit aims to be more of a meritocracy and also requires investment financially and time and quality of content.
For many users of Facebook this is not appealing they would much rather use a free service and enjoy whatever content they can find on it. Facebook thrives on lowest common denominator content that can appeal to just about anyone, sex, pranks, scandal, general news and of course personal circles. It allows anyone to document seemly useless data that is not beneficial to anyone but advertisiers who want to target your interests.
Your ideas about facebook seem spot on to me.
I am in complete agreement that this is a model that can and will be used by a superstar project. Patience...
Steemit is not a great platform to compare to facebook, I see a lot of differences between the two but to find them we have to look deeper into the nature of blockchain. I see it as an alternative marketing platform and I believe powers that be see it as potentially disruptive and dangerous. It is a completely new model of content delivery and for the most part a fresh take on an age old social experiment.
Great points.
Hi @techblogger
Thanks for the constructive comment and yes I agree Steemit can't be compared to Facebook! In its current form, it definitely is an alternative content marketing platform rather than a social media platform.
Having said that its current state could form a base for all sorts of new avenues, but that will only come once they deal with the current teething issues and blockchain becomes more accessible. The barrier to entry is far too high, I always say if my mom can't use it then it's still too complicated lol
I think the superstar project isn't too far away and i'm sure someone is working on it as we speak. The real issue i have with Steemit is that the majority of people who have been attracted to it are here for the magical money they can earn its the key motivator. The superstar platform will encourage participation naturally users will want to use it while the monetary benefits are more of a bonus for most while others can still seek to make a living on it depending on how committed and creative they are
Thanks
Yes, I believe there will be a life after Facebook!
Either it will have to completely reinvent itself from the ground up - and replace itself basically by a fairer business model that puts "benefit for all (its users)" above "profits only for shareholders", or it will be replaced by alternatives.
ONO is on the horizon, and while we don't know yet if it's just a hype or has some real potential to change the social media landscape, it won't take long before there will be other serious competitors.
Even if Facebook plans to turn things around, it will only work if they are fast enough - before people have completely lost trust, and before the competitors are stronger.
I have a feeling, though, that we haven't seen the last of the data scandal yet. I have a feeling something is still about to happen, that will push more people over the edge - away from Facebook into "better" (fairer, more private) social media.
Even a giant like this is not immune to sudden, total collapse. Our world is in a consciousness and value shift - people are reevaluating what and who to put their trust in. Central institutions are gradually losing our trust.
Some of us are ready to trust an algorithm instead of a central institution. Many others are not. Whether DAO's will be successful in the long run, depends how fast human consciousness rises and adapts to this new organisational form that has rules, but no ruler.
The Dash DAO is a great example of a working DAO and a true trailblazer.
did you subtly endorse steemit as an alternative to facebook? anyways people nowadays realized that their data is being sold by the centralized private org. and censorship is also one of their issue, i hope this won't happen to steemit future users.
Facebook will be replaced in the future for sure!...:)...
It may take time for DAOs to take off.
R.I.P Facebook LONG LIVE STEEMIT!!!