How Social Media Can Benefit From Blockchain Technology Posted on : Jun 22 - 2018

Blockchain has gained increasing popularity over the past year. Having begun as the technology behind cryptocurrency exchanges, it has now shown promise in almost every other sector of the economy as it’s a secure, reliable and tamper-proof way of recording transactions and exchanging data.

So, what promise does this technology hold for social media?

Blockchain helps with verification of information and news

Facebook has been very busy in recent months, digging into and deleting false accounts that have posted fake news for several years now. Blockchain distributed ledger system can work to prevent all of this in the first place.

Verifying identities, verifying information and data that has been posted, etc. are all things that blockchain holds the promise to do. For instance, the 0xcert protocol provides a framework for developers to build powerful decentralized apps (dapps), enabling everyone to easily authenticate and manage their digital or real-world assets (such as original content, ID, university degree, in-game item or a house) on the blockchain. This can also help with gathering and verifying all types of data, including news and other information shared online.

The momentum is growing, and there will be pressure on social media platforms to incorporate this technology, either through third-party providers or by developing their own blockchain environment for verification.

Blockchain can create better user control mechanisms

Social media platforms collect a huge amount of data. Every time an account holder posts; every time an account holder likes or shares a post of another; every time an account holder opens an ad on the platform; and even every time an account holder searches the web and accesses other websites, the data makes its way to their profile or homepage. This is why we see so many ads in our newsfeed on Facebook.

How information is collected and exactly what is done with that information remain pretty much a mystery. And as recent events with Facebook have demonstrated, user information can be manipulated, distributed to third parties, and perhaps even sold, creating revenue streams for social media platform owners that are certainly never shared with the users whose information has been sold. And if this results in hacking of personal and financial information, there is little a user can do.

Blockchain can disrupt all of this activity. It can give users control of their own information and exactly where it goes. No platform will have access to it without permission. And the implications are quite far-reaching. View More