Decentralized social media explained

An explainer by CoinMarketCap covering decentralized social media platforms, how they differ from centralized networks, the freedom of speech trade-offs, interoperability benefits, and a tour of leading platforms including Mastodon, Minds, Steem, DTube, Audius, and Subsocial.

This transcript is an accessible copy of the original video transcript (opens in a new tab) published by CoinMarketCap. It has been lightly edited for readability.

The case for decentralized social networks (0:00)

Decentralized social media — with the ongoing account bans on Twitter, with YouTube handing out strikes, with Facebook stock on the decline — could it be time for decentralized social networks to finally step up and challenge the status quo? And if they do, if they become our new way of socializing online, how would they be different? How would they look? What would we do differently?

There's a growing feeling across every generation that social media hasn't really lived up to its promises. Over the years it has evolved into closed, financially driven, centralized networks that are constantly bombarded by privacy scandals and endless allegations of censorship.

When it comes to censorship, we're talking about freedom of speech, and that is one way decentralized social networks have the opportunity to do something different. Freedom of speech is tricky. Letting people decide what they want to read and hear and who they want to interact with has obvious benefits — like giving a voice to the oppressed, the censored, or the unheard.

But when everybody has freedom of speech, sometimes — especially on social media platforms — you're constantly bombarded by messages, videos, and images that are disturbing or violent. A free-for-all where everybody can do whatever they want doesn't really work. There needs to be some sort of moderation, but that doesn't mean decentralized social networks need to moderate content in the same way that Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube does. They have an opportunity to come up with innovative ways of moderating content that don't rely on centralized control or a one-size-fits-all worldview.

For example, one decentralized social media platform suggests randomly selecting moderation juries who decide whether certain content is acceptable after it's been flagged.

Interoperability and user control (3:08)

On a more technical side, today's social networks aren't really built with the best user experience in mind — they're built to keep your attention on the site for as long as possible and show you as many ads as possible. On top of that, you can't move your photos or status updates from Twitter to Facebook, nor can you message someone from Instagram to WhatsApp — even if they're owned by the same company.

Imagine if sending emails worked like this: if you wanted to email somebody with a Gmail account, they would also need Gmail. That's not how email works, but that is how social media works. With decentralized social networks, it doesn't have to be that way. Decentralized networks talk to one another in just the same way that phones on different mobile networks do.

In more practical terms, this means you could interact with all your friends across social media networks without needing to join each one. You could easily move from one platform to another, taking all your data, pictures, and status updates with you. There would be no boardroom of directors deciding what counts as free speech on behalf of the whole world, and it would be very hard for governments to censor their critics and dissidents.

Mastodon (5:22)

The Mastodon network is essentially a decentralized version of Twitter — except it's not a single website. Instead, Mastodon is a global network of thousands of communities called instances, each run by different people and organizations. Anyone can create and run their own community, just like anyone can build a website using WordPress.

Each instance has its own moderators who decide the rules for their respective communities, including what content is allowed or not. Users from one community can easily interact with users from another, or they can stay private. If you don't like the rules of a specific community, you can leave and join another without losing all your data. You also have options for muting or blocking individual users or even entire instances.

In typical social network fashion, you can create a Mastodon profile through which you can follow and message other users as well as share status updates. Messages are called "toots" and have a 500-character limit that can include hashtags, images, videos, or polls. Mastodon boasts a user base of around four and a half million users.

Minds (6:39)

Minds is an open-source platform designed for content creators to take back their internet freedom, revenue, and social reach. Minds works just like Facebook but with a twist — you're actually paid for contributing to the network. Wired once described Minds as "the anti-Facebook that pays you for your time."

The Minds home page looks a lot like Facebook, just with a different color scheme. You can post statuses, images, videos, and blog posts, as well as chat with friends through messages or video. If other users like and share your content, you receive the platform's native Minds tokens. You can use those tokens to upgrade your channel or boost your content to reach more users, and people can donate to your channel directly in dollars, Bitcoin, or even Ethereum.

When it comes to hateful or offensive content, the platform doesn't ban hateful speech outright, arguing that deplatforming individuals only sends people to darker and more extreme parts of the web. Instead, Minds hopes that civil discourse on its platform will contribute to deradicalization. As a backup plan, Minds has "content juries" — every time content is flagged, a jury of twelve random users are selected to decide whether it should stay up or not, and their decision is final.

Steem and DTube (8:16)

Steem is a social blockchain purposely designed for app builders who want to create social and content-focused applications. The Steem blockchain offers near-instant and fee-less transactions, and the developers claim it handles more transactions than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined.

Steem is probably best known as the blockchain supporting Steemit — a decentralized social content and blogging app where you can earn money for contributing. Steemit was actually the first blogging platform to use crypto as its reward mechanism. So far, the 1.2 million registered users have shared nearly 60 million dollars for their contributions to the platform. More than 300 social apps have already launched through Steem.

One of them is DTube — short for Decentralized Tube. DTube is a popular YouTube alternative where you can earn rewards by posting videos, curating playlists and collections, and uploading content. The platform has daily pool reward tokens allocated to the most-liked content creators and curators of the day. Unlike YouTube, DTube doesn't have any ads and has very liberal censorship rules — the only way your videos can be censored is if other users downvote them. The DTube community collectively decides which videos are suggested to other users.

Audius (10:08)

Audius is one of the leading decentralized streaming platforms with more than six million monthly users. It's a blockchain-based music streaming platform built to fairly reward artists and give unsigned musicians a way to publish their music, grow their following, and interact with their fan base without ever needing to sign a record deal.

All uploaded music is stored on the blockchain forever, which helps artists protect their intellectual property. While popular streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music focus on streaming music alone, Audius offers both music streaming and social networking elements so artists can interact with their fans directly and sell their music. Artists can offer exclusive access to their content as well as limited-edition NFT products, and they can earn extra revenue if their tracks make the top five weekly trending tracks. Audius has attracted attention from household names including Katy Perry and Jason Derulo, and was recently praised by Rolling Stone magazine.

Subsocial (11:09)

Subsocial is like a decentralized Reddit or Medium where you can start your own community called a "space," which you can monetize, customize, and moderate as you see fit. There are more than 5,000 spaces up and running, and the Subsocial ecosystem is designed around social finance (SoFi), hoping to eventually become the underlying architecture for all future decentralized social networks.

Just like on Facebook or Twitter, you can create your own profile on Subsocial, which goes with you everywhere through the entire network. You can share any kind of content including text, images, and videos. You can tip content creators for posting interesting or funny content, and other users can also tip you.

Closing (12:12)

Is Minds or Mastodon the next Facebook or Twitter? No — they're different, and that's the whole point. They offer us something we haven't seen for a very long time: an opportunity to use social media platforms as the word was meant to be used — to actually socialize and have civilized discourse.

That said, we have to be realistic. MySpace didn't disappear in just one day — in fact, it's probably still online. It's going to take time before all your friends are on decentralized social networks. But it all starts with you taking the first step — choosing a decentralized social network that speaks to you and your values, taking that leap of faith, and then inviting your friends.