It’s almost a cliché to read about Web3 and the intro starts by pointing out the flaws of Web2. By Web2, we mean the current social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook. This almost seems like a routine filled with points you’ve heard so many times that you almost can’t tell anymore if it’s just to justify the point of Web3 or if there is truly a problem that has to be addressed, hence Web3.

Before we move on with our point, let’s show you some posts we’ve seen too many times. There are a million examples, but to save your time and ours, here are a few:

We read through several comments like this, and my hands got cold. Do you know why? It’s because the emotions in those posts are so real. These are people with thousands of followers and several years invested in growing these platforms. How do you explain losing 3–5 years of your hard work, or even longer in some cases, when no one thinks they owe you an explanation?

Even recently, Twitter rebranded to X, and guess what?

Censorship is crazy enough, but let’s assume you’ve never been affected by it, so you genuinely don’t care. But then again, it doesn’t end there. We promised to save your time and mine, but let us quickly show you this:

• A study by the University of California, Berkeley found that social media platforms use data collected from users to target them with advertising that is more likely to influence their behavior.

• In 2018, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, had used data collected from Facebook users to target them with political ads during the 2016 US presidential election.

The points listed are just a few examples of the damage that data manipulation can cause, especially considering the growing popularity of social media.

As of April 2023, more than half of the world’s population now uses social media (60%), and the average user spends 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media per day. This means that social media platforms have a vast amount of data about their users’ habits and interests. This data can be used to manipulate users’ decisions in many ways, such as:

• Tailoring advertising to users’ preferences, in order to influence their buying behavior.

• Promoting political candidates or causes that are favorable to the platform’s owners.

• Spreading misinformation or propaganda.

• Fueling polarization and extremism.

We are all victims of this manipulation, whether we realize it or not. It is important to be aware of the ways in which our data can be used to influence us and to take steps to protect our privacy.

As for a joke, here is one:

What do you call a Web2 social media platform that prioritizes privacy?

A myth.

• In June 2021, a hacker posted a database of 700 million LinkedIn users for sale on a Dark Web forum. The data included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information for about 92% of LinkedIn’s total user base of 756 million people.

The data was dumped in two waves. The first wave, which exposed 500 million users, was posted on June 17, 2021. The second wave, which exposed the remaining 200 million users, was posted on June 24, 2021

• In April 2021, a large amount of personal data belonging to over 533 million Facebook users was leaked online. The leaked data included users’ names, phone numbers, email addresses, and other personal information. The data was reportedly scraped from Facebook by malicious actors who exploited a vulnerability in the platform.

• Twitter has also been hacked at different times with the most recent in 2023 exposing the personal data of over 200 million users, including their email addresses, dates of birth, usernames, and phone numbers.

Web2 platforms have a long history of security breaches, which have exposed users’ data to a lot of exploitation. When it comes to users’ privacy and security, Web2 platforms are definitely lacking. This is a major reason why there is a need for Web3.

Just last week, we were discussing how rewarding creators on Web2 platforms like X could change the narrative. However, the move to a decentralized social network goes far beyond monetary rewards. It is bigger than that. It is the desire to create a system that is designed with the users at the center of it all. Web3 is a movement, a revolution for creators, and a new paradigm for social interaction.

Now that you know some of the pain points of Web2, let’s talk about Web3’s key propositions for tackling its setbacks.

Web3 Keys features Driving the New Paradigm for Social Engagement.

1. Decentralization and user empowerment: The goal of decentralizing the social experience is to shift the system from all that you’ve read before now which is a system of high-level censorship and control to a system that puts the user at the center of it all. Right now, for absolutely no reason you can wake up and no longer have access to your data or maybe even your content completely removed. While moderating may be needed, no one should be subjected to outright censorship.

We are not making this up, it’s all there:

Facebook has been accused of censoring content related to the Kurdish opposition against Turkey, the Kashmir dispute, the email leaks of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, and the conflict over the Sheikh Jarrah property dispute. The company has also been criticized for maintaining a secret blacklist of “dangerous individuals and organizations”. These practices have been criticized by human rights groups, journalists, and activists, who argue that they stifle free speech and prevent people from sharing important information.

In addition to the specific incidents mentioned above, Facebook has also been criticized for its broader censorship practices in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Critics argue that Facebook’s censorship in this region is stricter than in the United States and that it is used to silence dissent and stifle free speech.

This image of Jude was shared again on the Instagram Stories of Hearst Pride, the LGBTQ+ affinity group after it was originally posted and taken down.

This happened after Elon Musk took over Twitter, a platform that had been touted as a champion of free speech. A Twitter user shared how detrimental this censorship is, but then again, this is Web2, where users have little to no say in how their data and content are managed.

This happened after Elon Musk took over Twitter, a platform that had been touted as a champion of free speech. A Twitter user shared how detrimental this censorship is, but then again, this is Web2, where users have little to no say in how their data and content are managed.

All these are just a few of the many examples showing the need for decentralization.

2. Data Mobility: The current digital landscape is fragmented, with each social media platform having its own ecosystem and identity. This results in users’ data being locked and restricted depending to each platform. Data silos are a major problem in Web2 social media. When data is siloed, it is locked up in a single platform and cannot be easily shared or accessed by other platforms. This gives the platform that controls the data a lot of power, and it can be used to exploit users or to stifle competition.

The current system restricts us from transferring our data and relationships across different networks, leading to fragmented digital identities. Data mobility is the concept of moving data freely between different platforms and applications. It is at the heart of the Web3 Social paradigm, which aims to eliminate the barriers that prevent us from taking our digital experiences with us as we navigate through various platforms.

A recent example of carrying your data with you was the case of Instagram and Threads. When Threads was launched, users were able to connect their Instagram accounts and bring their data with them. This meant that they didn’t have to create a new profile or start from scratch.

The only problem with this is that your data is still within the Meta ecosystem. This means that Meta still has control over your data. However, it is a step in the right direction. It shows that it is possible to carry your data with you across different platforms.

Web3 promises to take this a step further. In Web3, your data will be stored on the blockchain, which is a decentralized database. This means that no one company will have control over your data. You will be able to carry your data with you across any platform, regardless of who owns it.

One of the projects driving Data Mobility is Match Chain. Match Chain is a revolutionary social graph built on Cosmos that serves as a catalyst for data mobility in Web3 Social. It is an open, permissionless foundation for providing users control over their data, fostering transparency, and enabling effortless data transfer across different networks.

The Web3 Social promise is that data mobility will revolutionize the way we interact with social media. It will make it easier for us to connect with people, build relationships, and share content. Match Chain is a key enabler of the Web3 social vision.

Match Chain allows builders to seamlessly build social experiences and provide them with access to high user traffic. This lowers the barrier to entry for new developers as they can now build their innovation and easily scale it on the Match Chain.

3. Creator Empowerment: In Web2, your content is not yours. You may want to argue this point, but what do you do if you wake up and see that all your content and account is gone? Let me help you with the answer: nothing.

Content ownership is a complex issue because users own the content they create, but the platforms they use to share that content typically have the right to remove or modify it at any time. This means that users can lose access to their content if the platform shuts down or changes its terms of service.

For example, if you create a post on LinkedIn and LinkedIn decides to delete your post, there is nothing you can do to get it back. LinkedIn owns the platform and the content on it, so they have the right to do whatever they want with it.

This lack of control over content ownership can be a major problem for creators. It can make it difficult to build a sustainable business around their work, and it can also make it difficult to protect their intellectual property.

So how does Web3 change this, you may ask? Web3 socials allows you to mint your content as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) which are unique digital assets that are stored on the blockchain. This means that they are tamper-proof and cannot be easily copied or deleted.

When you mint your content as an NFT, you are essentially creating a digital certificate of ownership. This certificate is stored on the blockchain and cannot be tampered with. This gives you the peace of mind knowing that your content is yours and that you can control how it is used.

3. Community Building: Recently discovered a new decentralized application (dApp) called Friend.tech that allows Twitter users to sell shares of their accounts. This means that anyone can buy shares of their favorite creators, giving them a closer relationship with those creators than is possible for the average follower.

Friend.tech is built on the Base blockchain, which is a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. This makes it more scalable and efficient than traditional Ethereum dApps.

To use Friend.tech, users first need to connect their Twitter account. Once they have done that, they can create a shareable link that allows others to buy shares of their account. The price of each share is determined by supply and demand.

When someone buys a share of a Twitter account, they gain certain privileges, such as the ability to send private messages to the account holder and participate in exclusive chat rooms. The more shares someone owns, the more privileges they have.

Friend.tech is still in its early stages, but it’s exciting to see how much people are excited about the possibilities.

Web3 socials can help with community building because they offer creators new opportunities. For example, imagine a chef who offers a cooking class with a special ingredient kit. Every participant who purchases the kit (and is also a verified attendee of the class) gains access to an exclusive online forum. In this forum, they can discuss cooking techniques, share their culinary creations, and even interact with the chef who taught the class.

This concept is similar to the emerging trend of Web3 community integration. For example, users of platforms like this exclusive forum and other Web3 culinary apps can easily find the profiles of other chefs who are part of the same class attendee community. These innovative approaches to fostering interconnected global communities go beyond the capabilities of the current Web2 landscape.

There are also several Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) which are also another form of community building towards achieving a certain goal from charitable causes and nonprofits to open source software development and healthcare collaboratives. The possibilities are endless!

For example, the Moloch DAO has raised over $10 million to fund research into synthetic biology, the KlimaDAO is using blockchain technology to fight climate change and Uniswap DAO governs Uniswap Protocol, a top decentralized exchange that allows users to trade cryptocurrencies without the need for a central authority.

We have only scratched the surface of the many ways to foster communities on Blockchain. We encourage you to do more research on this topic.

Conclusion

Web3 socials is evolving and it’s really exciting to see because of the possibilities it opens up for creators and users. It is a complete revolution, although, in its early stage, it’s changing how we think about social experiences.

We are truly not at the point where everyone is using it, but every day we see projects like Match and others that are making it easier to build while helping to provide user traffic for these new experiences.

One thing is certain, Web3 is not a fad or a bubble that will burst with time. It is a true solution to the fallbacks of Web2, and it is the future of social interaction.

About Match Chain

Match Chain is an EVM-compatible social graph built on Cosmos, it is designed to be decentralized and composable, providing users with data sovereignty. Match Chain has a scalable architecture and robust features that offer developers the tools they need to easily create and deploy powerful and secure Web3 solutions.

For more information, visit the links below.

Website | DevDoc | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Reddit