Social Media Protocols: Why Decentralization Matters in Social Networks - Limone.eth

[Applause] hello yes it works hello everyone thanks for being here today I must be honest I've been giving this talk all around the world and uh never did it in in a church so feeling a little bit de pressure you know but uh we can make it so today uh I will be talking again about social media protocols starting from uh the traditional centralized social networks that we used on a on a daily basis uh going forward uh with the decentralization Spectrum so understanding why decentralization matters and how the blockchain can help uh new social uh social networks rising and uh being more in favor of users so first of all about me uh I'm a software engineer and also a community Builder uh I've been building this community in Ro for two years participa in to aons uh creating multiple projects especially in the social space is um but yeah so let's let's start I will start with the with the Twitter uh example which is the centralized social network by by default but it's just a placeholder that can be replaced by like meta Instagram WhatsApp Snapchat everything that we use that is uh being run by centralized companies then we will move forward to Federated social networks like Mason which somehow try to solve the uh issues that we find in examples like Twitter uh with a Federated approach uh then we have like some decentralized social network examples that are using peer-to-peer networks so not blockchain but just distributed networks and uh this of course is still like improving the um you know the openness of of the network and the and protecting the user data making it accessible also easier from different platform and finally I will go to some example of social networks that are uh built uh with some blockchain components so first of all I have to say that centralization in general is not ideal and in social networks in particular uh I think it's a problem so these list of things that you see here on the screen it are like the basic components that uh uh uh are included in a social network so the Nam space is the list of like names usern names that user can get uh the network is uh uh you know the the graph of connection between users between po how like they are following each other the database is the place where all this data is stored uh the protocol is what defines how users can interact with each other so if they can send direct messages if they can make comment whatever and the platform instead it's like the application the interfaces that you can use to interact with this protocol so like I can use Twitter and post or or like something and finally the ru set is what uh for example the defines the the feed that we are seeing the content that we are seeing or maybe the rules around uh uh what content is allowed what not uh why I should be suspended why I should be banned everything that I mentioned so far is owned by the company so in this case there's Elon Musk here owning all these components on Twitter and this means that he can change everything that is at his will and uh this has been a problem in the past already so when uh uh last year Twitter rebranded to to X what happened that there was a guy honing the X handle so the X username and of course uh once Twitter rebranded to 2x they wanted to to claim the tle so that it became the the official account for for the company and they were able to do it because the database is owned by them so they just needed to change a simple row on a on a database and uh claim the handle of course like the the guy wasn't happy about it uh and he made uh like a big case and uh and in the end like Twitter uh gifted them gifted him a Tesla C just for you know to to to replace for G uh another problem with social network most important like centralized ones of course is that they are wet guarded so imagine that um I don't like Twitter anymore I don't like the defeat that uh you know M decided me to to follow like why I'm seeing this content with respect to this other one maybe they are influen when seeing uh me or other people uh the same old for Instagram or think about Tik Tok you know if I don't like it uh what can I do the only thing I can do is deleting the app and moving into another uh social network but it's a problem for me because if I build my reputation and my following on a specific Social Network I cannot bring everything in another place so if I like for I'm using Tik Tok I have a big account on Tik Tok and at some point I they decide to B me uh I have other options of course like YouTube shorts or uh Instagram Wheels but to restart I have to restart again so if I de to move on Instagram I need to restart my following and content again so it's it's a bad experience uh that's why like we should uh strive and build more open protocols rather than uh closing ourselves into this um locked platforms um but even though like open Protocols are not immune to centralization so a good example of open protocols is uh SMTP SMTP is the protocol used to exchange emails uh and as you can see there are like many Alternatives because SMTP is an open protocol and so many different companies were able to integrate it so that in a way that if I have a Gmail account I can still send you a uh an email through uh to your libero or Yahoo or Outlook account like whatever you're using and the same gos for uh the browser you can you can use Chrome you can use uh uh Internet Explorer if you want to be slow or you can use uh Safari everything is like that because uh they are built on open protocol so uh of course they are still centralized somehow because in the end uh uh most users end up for example in the case of emails using Gmail uh but the most important thing is that if I don't like Gmail I can still use another client so I can switch uh going forward on the Spectrum there's the fediverse so uh the most popular example of a Federated social network is Maston does anybody here know about Maston already have you ever like used it okay few people um so it's built on a on on a protocol called activity p and basically imagine that in Twitter for example you have a single town you have a single feied where everybody's posting you know on a centralized database in masteron you have multiple of these towns because it's easier it's actually like possible for other users other people around the world to create their own server and host their Community there so each server has its own freedom and this of course gives more like uh freedom of speech because each server has their own rule uh but at the same time it has some drawbacks so like these are the thing that are I like about the fivers that you can move around different instances different communities and uh still be like uh free to like talk about whatever you want want uh it's under community control and you can your own server what I don't like instead is that uh it's not so easy to host a server because you know it's technical stuff so there are like some centralization Tendencies because in the end most users are ending up using the three or four most popular instances so there's a big Community for art a big Community for I don't know a server around dogs for example uh this instances more over like they can't talk with each other and in the end there's a big privacy concerns because content is not endend encrypted and instead of uh giving your data to Twitter which or X in this case which is a well regulated public company you're giving your data to a random obies around the world so not only like you need to trust them you also uh you also want them to be uh careful about where they store the data if they're selling it if they can be open to like data breaches whatever uh there are some examples that I won cover here of decentralized protocols like blue sky or or Noster which are like uh good alternatives to to the to master them in a Federated uh environment but let's move to the web three social so social networks that are built with the someon chain components the main examples that are live already that you can use today are forecaster and lens they both integrate the blockchain uh in some ways let L protocol on one side they post everything on the blockchain so imagine every post every like every um um follow all the interaction they are posted on chain and this is not very efficient because as you know like blockchain comes with gas feed uh it's not like uh so fast to index uh to index data uh but still you know data is there it's decentralized it's open nobody can delete it so if you have your following you can use your ident around multiple client applications so they had this protocol Force approach they decided to First build the protocol and then uh involve developers creating new applications and hopefully bring in a community unfortunately that didn't work well um while forcaster is a much has a much more pragmatic approach forcaster is sufficiently recentralized so not everything is on chain and that's more efficient uh they had a product Force approach so what they did is is let's start building a social network where people can engage so they started with a crypto Niche they gathered uh like bunch of thousands of users and then they slowly uh decentralized the protocol meaning that they slowly move the compon key components of the social network on the blockchain so that user data was like more portable more protected and and they will keep like ownership of whatever they were doing again not everything is on chain the only thing that leaves on chain for C is your identity so your ID your username is on chain and nobody can roke that for you because it's on chain on a smart contract tied to your wallet address uh while as we've seen with the Twitter case the username the ID the identity is on a database centralized one that anybody in the Twitter company can can edit um sufficient decentralization what does it mean it's it's a concept that they created so Baron the E cofounder wrote about this in an article uh back in the days couple years ago um a social network achieves sufficient decentralization if two users can find each other and communicate even if the rest of the network wants to prevent it what does it mean like the most important thing for us in social network is around communication so we want to use them to be in touch with each other to communicate to read stuff to post messages and uh the most important thing in is to uh avoid that somebody in the network can prevent hasn't doing so in the case of Twitter again like meta Instagram Tik Tok if somebody wants to prevent me posting stuff they can do it in foraster but also on lens it's not possible because the protocol is open is the centralized and so nobody can prevent me uh there are like three key things to achieve this property the first one is that I should be able to claim unique username so if I am lemon. it nobody else should be able to claim that so everybody is sure that this is my real identity then I always should be able to post messages with that username so nobody should prevent me in posting messages to the network either a post like whatever uh with my username and in the end I should always be able to read messages with the from valid username so if there are other friends of mine that are posting on the network uh I should always be able to read those messages so nobody can prevent me in uh writing and and reading content uh how does it work so you register your account uh with a wallet it's also totally abstracted there are some clients that allow you some mobile application that allow you pay like some small fees to join the network with Apple pay so you don't need a wallet you can like simply start uh using it and uh this uh interaction is of course like registering a new um identity and username on the smart contract then every time you're sending a message to the Network behind the scenes this wallet is signing the message so that other people in the network can verify that it was you that actually publish that message um this message where is it going so it's not going on Shain it's going on a distributed P top network uh that is uh reaching consensus uh eventually so as you know there are like different consensus mechanism in the blockchain space like proof of work proof of State uh and they are like very strict consensus mechanism because it's import that consistency is uh shared across the whole network while in this PTO Network the most important thing is that in the end the state of all these nodes synchronizing and storing the data it's um it's synchronized so if I'm posting now it's not crucial to me that I don't know my friend can see it immediately it's important that uh it's sted there and uh uh it's sted on multiple uh replicas multiple databases so that somebody wants to delete my message there are still other peers uh that have that message available and finally there are multiple F tops so the cool thing about the centralized social network is that your identity Lees on chain or on a centralized Network so M developers can build multiple application Tik Tok like video like image like Twitter like so different experiences but I can still log in into these applications with my same account so I I can bring my identity my following my content all around um yeah so again on chain that's only what's needed the the blockchain is not an efficient storage mechanism so forecaster uh uses uh smart contracts for crucial uh uh secure and consistent operations like creating an account uh paying rent to store data because in the end like of course like to store data in a decentralized way that there are like some incentives for people to do that um while oops is it not working anymore yeah it's it's stuck computer block out it's stuck yeah I mean I can continue anyways um so off chain what happens like you are posting message to the network you are liking uh content you are following somebody uh everything that is not that does not require like crucial consistency okay something is happening oops yes posting so of chain what happens like you can post messages you can follow other people reacting to post everything uh is not like consistency critical is happening on this peerto uh Network this is the architecture so how does it work maybe let's have a simple way accounts identity are stored on optimis uh usernames can either be like for C names or even ens names e name Service uh and everything uh is happening on chain in this case then we have like some data layer that you can see also here so there's a network of ABS in the middle layer that is storing all the data everything happening in the network and finally there are client application mobile ones web ones that are reading this data there are some examples like if you want don't know where to start warcast is the main client as a good like mobile and web experience there's supercast XYZ uh it's as a is a web client for forast power users Nar is said like if you are a developer is the easiest way to start building new applications of our Caster so they offer API services to use and and these are just some screenshots so this is worldcast it's my profile as you can see yeah maybe you cannot really see it but it's Twitter live client with feeds uh that are like Channel similar to redit this is super Cass set so slightly similar experience but still like different capabilities they also have a small component to perform swaps on chain this is lunch CER instead so if you know product hun is a place where you can share new product launches uh they built it with faser so somebody decided to create this place where people can publish their new projects and this is Ancaster instead is a Reddit like lli so if you like Reddit subreddits and uh up voting down voting content somebody built an experience like that on top of forecaster uh yeah that's pretty much it um if you want to try using foraster I'm not working for foraster in any ways but I'm a big fan and uh I can like give you an account is like3 $5 like like very very easy so and if you have any question like I to answer them also later in the court yard thank you thank you so much