The Story Of 2021: Big Tech Flexing Its Muscle
While everyone focuses on the price of cryptocurrency going to the moon, an even bigger one is starting to play out on a large scale.
Remember way back when, oh maybe 6 months ago, when people on Hive talked about censorship resistance and nobody was paying attention? In other words, it fell on deaf ears.
At that time, the only ones who understood, i.e. felt the effects, were those nutty people in crypto, who believe in flat earth theories, or were against vaccinations.
Isn't it amazing how quickly things can change? Now we have tens of millions of people who understand what censorship really means. It is funny how people are all for it these days until it happens to them.
That said, Hive is doing its best to be a viable option but there is a challenge with this. To start, we do not have the tools as of yet to model what was taking place in the social media realm. Sure we have blogging which is great for those who like to write long posts on their sites. However, we know this does not encompass most of the Internet traffic.
Nevertheless, there still is the basic advantage that what is posted on the blockchain is locked in there. Thus, an account can't be deleted from the blockchain nor can the data (text) that is posted there.
Yesterday, @dan made an appearance posting about the topic of censorship. This took place before the takedown of Parlor by Amazon Web Services. That application, for what it was worth, is now toast until (if) it finds another home to host it. This only fed into the point that he was making; we are still dealing with an extremely centralized structure.
The arrogance of Big Tech is only growing. Most see the hypocrisy that took place over the last half year. Many will remember Zuckerberg in front of Congress with his smirk. He knew he had nothing to fear.
Big Tech is even bigger than government. The sad part is they are about to get more powerful. Without realizing it, the banking system is about to be handed over to the likes of Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. These are going to be the ones hosting the financial system very soon. The banks are only now starting to realize how fried they really are.
Of course, the censorship topic applies also to financial. Once it is digitized, it is all the same: data. The problem is few realize that seriousness of what happened.
It doesn't matter whether one agrees with those who had their accounts closed or not. What is important is the fact that Big Tech showed it can happen to anyone it deems averse to its viewpoint. Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
All the posts that were done on Twitter and Facebook are now gone. For some, that is a decade worth of work. However, that pales in comparison to this idea: what is that data was their actual money? How would these people be feeling today if $100K was in their wallet and their account simply was closed down? Suddenly that person is desolate.
Thus, we need to turn back to Hive and consider what steps we can take at every layer to make things more secure and resistant to outside attack. This is vital because if there is any degree of success in this endeavor, the major forces will come. Right now Hive is just a speck so it is not really an issue. If, however, some major players show up, the forces will quickly focuses upon Hive.
@ausitbank posted a comment in Dan's post that showed a simple step that was undertaken to add a level of censorship resistance.
Here is the links from the comment for easy reference:
Other have pointed to Unstoppable Domains as another solution to protect a website from being taken down. This technology actually uses a blockchain wallet with a name instead of the usual numbers and letters like on Ethereum. When coupled with decentralized storage, this turns it into a powerful weapon against censorship.
From their website:
Of course all of this means little if the likes of Apple and Google keep wiping the apps from their stores. This interrupts the availability of the application to the majority of users since most access things using mobile. Hence, we have to create ways to get the download packets to people that can be spread very easily.
As we can see, there is still a lot of work to do. In the meantime, Big Tech will keep getting stronger while exhibiting their enormous power.
This shows how important what we are doing on Hive really is. Providing an alternative to the centralized system is crucial. Now, we must look for everyone opportunity to do that. Layer by layer has to be torn apart, providing a decentralized alternative.
At this point is looks like the Great Race is still on but the runners have changed a big. Governments still think they are in control yet this might be a case of the tail actually wagging the dog.
Ultimately, this will be the true story of 2021 regardless of what happens to the bull run. Many discuss the idea of creating a different world and it is before us. Tyranny is coming from all side and it is up to use to keep working against it.
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