Social media and related facets have been changing rapidly over the past decade, making it almost impossible to follow the progress to date. While it started off as an apolitical way for global citizens to interact, communicate, and share ideas, social media is slowly taking a turn for the worst – as these platforms increasingly turn political. Censorship has become a big part of social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, etc.
Following Trump’s dismissal from most social media platforms in 2021, many celebrities (and social media users) have had to deal with censorship on social media. Recently, the world came down on Joe Rogan’s podcast due to his views on COVID-19, with musician Neil Young removing his music from Spotify in an aim to get a response to the views expressed on Joe’s show. These are just some of the examples of censorship across social media sites. But, shouldn’t social media be a free and transparent platform to share whatever kind of views one has?
To this effect, users are increasingly leaving the old traditional social media sites, as the terrain of social media communication changes right before our eyes. More than anything, users are switching to decentralized media platforms, which may very well be the blueprint for a censorship-free, fair, and transparent future of social media.
A new decentralized future of social media
The issue of censorship is present on many centralized services, not only social media platforms. Web 2.0 platforms have been previously accused of censorship, lack of transparency, and selling users’ data to third parties without the knowledge of their users. If social media platforms are to change in the future, they probably will not be cut from the same cloth as traditional Web 2.0 social media sites. The new models will be decentralized, using blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and open-source technology. This aims to make the platform more democratic, grant its users full ownership of their accounts & data, and share profits.
With a decentralized social media platform, no central authority controls the platform or sets rules of engagement or monetization. As social media turns towards decentralization, I believe the space is bound to become more free, transparent, and less fearful. Also, content creators will have the full rights of ownership to their data and content, meaning they’ll be able to earn more from their content and create an economical community around their following base.
Creaton, a blockchain-based social media platform, aims to revolutionize the traditional Web 2 social media platforms, offing a transparent and censorship-free platform. Built on Ethereum layer-2 scalability solution, Polygon, Creaton will preserve users’ data, provide low gas fees on transactions, offer complete decentralization, and allow users to monetize their content freely on the platform.
“Creaton is a decentralized, subscription-based content sharing platform that enables creators to distribute their content to fans directly on the blockchain,” its website states.
The Creaton-effect on social media creatives
Launched in October 2020, Creaton entered the field at a time when social media users suffered a lot due to censorship from their favorite platforms. Delayed payments, bans without explanation, onboarding problems, censorship all caused serious issues for creators. These problems have led other Web 3 teams to build solutions to solve the extensive problems on the current social media platform.
Despite their strengths and efforts, most decentralized social media platforms do not secure content at rest or in transit, don’t offer a stable recurring or streaming payment service, and do not have robust membership management systems. With the launch of Creaton, social media platforms on Web 3 are set to offer better solutions built on a blockchain.
The decentralized, subscription-based content sharing platform, enables creators to distribute their content to fans directly using existing standards. In order to be fully decentralized, the team replaced each commonly used building block of a subscription platform with a decentralized protocol.
How it works
Creators on Creaton will be able to mint their media (photos, ideas, music, videos, etc.) on a non-fungible token (NFT) contract and own the NFT. However, most NFTs are limited to 100 MB file size, meaning not all media can be directly minted on an NFT. To enable more content to be posted on its platform, Creaton has partnered with Arweave, a decentralized content storage solution. Creators’ content is encrypted when it is uploaded, and fans who subscribe to the channel can decrypt it, using NuCypher technology, and view it.
In a view to building a creator’s- first platform, Creaton will combine the advantages of traditional social media platforms with the advantages of decentralized platforms. The main pick-up from Web 2 is the subscription model, which has been neglected by many decentralized platforms. The team partnered with Superfluid, an Ethereum-based protocol that allows users to use crypto to handle their cashflows. The platform helps in the continuous and real-time settlement of subscriptions, salaries, rewards, and any composable stream of value.
Finally, the platform also includes its own DAO, which will be used to make governance decisions on the platform’s updates. The DAO will allow users with the native $CREATE token to vote and make proposals on the way forward for the social platform. The DAO includes subgroups to govern different elements of the platform, and anti-tampering elements built-in. Initially, the platform launched the Development Crew and the Social Crew.
Final words
The recent backlash towards Joe Rogan’s podcast is one of the more recent examples of why Web 2.0 social media platforms are failing. The rising cases of censorship and data privacy issues are making many users leave current social media platforms for decentralized ones. As blockchain technology becomes more accessible across the globe, I expect the rise of decentralized social platforms and fair competition with the big tech companies.
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