Decentralized Autonomous social networks
Web3 is trying to decentralize power and it is likely to start with social media like Facebook.
DASNA can mean I have hidden something in the slang interpretation of my born language if it is pronounced in a certain way but for this article, it simply means Decentralized Autonomous social networks applications which are about the open possibilities that we have for making architecturally better social media platforms and this observation is like a pattern that applies to sectors other than social media like marketplace and eCommerce and every other sector that involve interactions among participants.
The open possibility for making better social media applications that I will be covering here is a solution brought by the blockchain revolution and the coming web3 driven internet that could be filled with decentralized Autonomous organizations systems and I just named this possibility Decentralized Autonomous social networks because this is about using DAO in social networks.
The future of social networks is a Decentralization of power and censorship management eased by the correct implementation of DAO technologies enabled by blockchain. Such future social networks will not be owned by anyone neither Zuckerberg nor Parag Agrawal but by all the participants of the given social network, all of them holding the same amount of power or a power that is correlated to their level of usage of the network and/or their level interaction and empathy with others. With such future Decentralized Autonomous social networks, there will be many strategies for managing and decentralizing power that will be tested by many platform initiatives but what is sure is that they will end up being really not the property of someone or an organization. This can be fearful for governments, entrepreneurs, investors, and politics seeking control of power but if the power repartition strategy implemented by the Decentralized Autonomous social network platform is clear to every social member then the result is that people will end up using the ones that they think are giving them more power given the goal that they would achieve with their usage of social networks.
Twitter, Facebook, and many attention-driven internet-enabled platforms are facing a challenge and should see, acknowledge and work on this challenge of giving back the power that they have got by getting the attention of users. I am not an ex-facebook nor an ex-twitter employee but I have been listening yesterday Frances Haugen interviewed by kara swisher in her podcast sway and listening to them led me to write this article for showing you that it is possible for us to build worldwide social networks in which power is handled in a way that gives each user the power that he or she deserves, future social networks that cannot be manipulated by one or a set of persons willing to exploit the attention of people which is actually the most precious asset that much tech-enabled businesses are running for and many of them got valued billions of dollars without making a profit just because they have got this attention from us.
Web3 with DAOs will change a lot in the attention-driven economy that we are living in now. If we think of it deeply it will be not an incremental shift but a fundamental one. A fundamental shift that will not only challenge big social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook but even challenge governments to run fast for changing things because people will get real time power, not a power that is expressed only in recurring periods like during elections for countries and states and board members voting for organizations.
Starting to write this short article about the future of social networks, I thought that featuring the whistleblowing of Frances Haugen was important even it could cost me a spot at Facebook or other social networks startups that became big businesses but I am not even sure that I am skilly enough to be part of their teams but like Frances Haugen I am almost sure that most of the concerns and issues raised by social media platforms are adressable and my guess is that Decentralized Autonomous organization system driven by blockchain will play a key role in the solutions that will fix these issues.
I say Thank you to Frances Haugen for your clear point, thank you to Kara for you good questions and opinions, and let’s recall that all of this is about tech and tech is about us.
PS: this article sounds like one of those of the Greyio Heart Experiment. The sway podcast with France Haugen is here
