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by daraosn 3300 days ago
First, it's not what I want, it's what I perceive – only my opinion.

Why a blockchain for social network? To really control my data and my online persona. It doesn't have to be a public blockchain, can be private and shared to my friends, if I wanted to.

I agree with you, that in poor countries the infrastructure is not prepared yet, but the world wasn't prepared also when the Internet was on dippers, this is just the beginning, I believe.

2 comments

> To really control my data and my online persona.

But HOW does blockchain give you "control over your data" in a way that uniquely requires a blockchain? You can do a heck of a lot just with existing tools, like asymmetric crypto and hashing.

The only use I can think of right now is to globally prove that user X really did publish Y at some time Z in the past. In other words, preventing anyone from "backdating" a piece of content.

Now, while that may be useful, it's not really offering you more control over your public persona. It's really just restricting what everyone can do in order to curb a certain kind of abuse.

But again what technical (as in operational, functional etc.) benefits would a social network built on a blockchain would have vs a standard website?

Unless you'll use some sort of a thick client you would still need an application server that would take the data which I'll assume you'll store in the blockchain and present it to the user.

How would a distributed database that need to hold even 0.001% of the information stored in say Facebook be even feasible on consumer devices? Why would you want to wrap that data with expensive PoW/PoS algorithms and how would this give you any sort of control over your personal information considering it's a public (even if it's a private blockchain) database that anyone with access to it can store any copy or revision of it they would like.

I'm not trying to be coy or rude I simply do not understand the point of using a blockchain for any purpose other than finance, it gives you account consolidation, compliance, transaction and balance ledger all in one tool this is great but for anything else... I simply can't see it.