Using Blockchain to Limit Big Tech's Power -- The Alt-Right Moves To Alt-Tech

[ancianita]

from today's print version of New York Times "They Found a Way to Limit Big Tech’s Power: Using the Design of Bitcoin" by Nathaniel Popper:

When YouTube and Facebook barred tens of thousands of Mr. Trump’s supporters and white supremacists this month, many flocked to alternative apps such as LBRY [alt-YouTube], Minds [alt-Facebook] and Sessions[alt-Google]. What those sites had in common was that they were also inspired by the design of Bitcoin.

That underlying technology is called the blockchain, a reference to the shared ledger on which all of Bitcoin’s records are kept.

Companies are now finding ways to use blockchains, and similar technology inspired by it, to create social media networks, store online content and host websites without any central authority in charge. Doing so makes it much harder for any government or company to ban accounts or delete content.

Dozens of start-ups now offer alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon’s web hosting services, all on top of decentralized networks and shared ledgers. Many have gained millions of new users over the past few weeks, according to the data company SimilarWeb.

Minds, a blockchain-based replacement for Facebook founded in 2015, also became an online home to some of the right-wing personalities and neo-Nazis who were booted from mainstream social networks, along with fringe groups, in other countries, that have been targeted by their governments. Minds and other similar start-ups are funded by prominent venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.

Blockchains are not the only solution for those in search of alternatives to Big Tech’s power. Many people have recently migrated to the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram, which have no need for a blockchain. Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal, has said decentralization made it hard to build good software.

The experimentation with decentralized systems has nonetheless ramped up over the last month. Brave, a new browser, announced last week that it would begin integrating a blockchain-based system, known as IPFS, into its software to make web content more reliable in case big service providers went down or tried to ban sites.

“The IPFS network gives access to content even if it has been censored by corporations and nation-states,” Brian Bondy, a co-founder of Brave, said.

At LBRY, the blockchain-based alternative to YouTube, the number of people signing up daily has surged 250 percent from December, the company said. The newcomers appear to have largely been a motley crew of Trump fans, white supremacists and gun rights advocates who violated YouTube’s rules.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/technology/big-tech-power-bitcoin.html



It's obvious that alt-right assemblages and mobilizations through blockchain sites open up and guarantee the grifting of the likes of Trump, Bannon, Proud Boys. And they are just the mobilizers, not the funders. Though they might have found refuge on democratic nets, their stay might not last if blockchain hackers make them unprofitable.

Unless...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/19/239592/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/

[hedda_foil]

1. Who's financing this?

[ancianita]

2. The article says Jeremy Kauffman created LBRY,

Minds and other similar start-ups are funded by venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures; Jack Dorsey's Square; Brian Bondy, who co-founded the IPFS network.

Looks like joint venture capitalists to me -- as long as the alt-right ideologies are profitable, I'm assuming. If they're hackable, though, these funders might pull their money. But by then I imagine it would be too late to dis-establish these alt-right mobilizations on blockchain, since blockchain tech, to my understanding, isn't for-profit.

EDIT: Then again, blockchain is subject to change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain#Types