Who Can Save Mark Zuckerberg?

Merculet

People all over the world are astonished at the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.

Facebook exposed data of 50 million Facebook users to a researcher at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica then spread variants of ads to targeted readers and the ads that got liked the most were reproduced and redistributed based on where they were popular and whom they appealed to, which then, influenced the result of the 2016 Presidential Election.

Source: NBC News

On March 22nd, after days of silence, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized with an announcement: “We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data and if we can’t do that then we don’t deserve to have the opportunity to serve people.”

Source: CNN

It is a sad story that Facebook, the most successful company in the information-based Internet era, made such a mistake and lost over 50 million in market value. After this setback, Mark Zuckerberg, the most respected global icon in this information-based Internet era looked sad and depressed.

Then, what’s wrong with Facebook? Who can save Mark Zuckerberg?

The reality behind the incident is always more complicated than what presented to the public.

When Internet disrupted the old world dramatically, everyone was looking forward to the freedom, equality, and efficiency of the technology. Because of these facts, people allowed social media platforms like Facebook to use all of their data by giving up their privacy which they thought it could embrace a better world.

But what did users get ultimately? Would those Internet tycoons share their hundreds of billions of dollars with ordinary users? No, they would not. Would they protect and value our privacy so that our information is not used illegally? No, they would not. The Facebook scandal reminded us if an Internet tycoon has deviated from the true spirit of the Internet, no matter how influential its founder is, our value would not be protected under the pressure of capital, politics, or even time.

If we dig one step deeper, we can see that it is far more than abuse of user information, because all users’ behavior on the Internet is published and stored at the application developer’s centralized servers. So in this centralized age, if Facebook or other platforms that we trusted ever change or disappear, the data we provided, and our wealth would also disappear. From a technical point of view, ordinary users cannot establish a digital trajectory that genuinely belong to them. From the perspective of social values, this is equivalent to the passive loss of user values and even the unnatural death of user identities.

To some extent, the Facebook scandal is not the mistake of Mark Zuckerberg. It is the inevitable consequence when information-based Internet era moves toward a monopoly.

So, who can save Mark Zuckerberg? The most convincing answer is blockchain.

Blockchain technology will transform the information-based Internet era to value-based Internet era. Most importantly, people would not need to hand over all their private information and value to people like Mark Zuckerberg. In the future, people like Mark Zuckerberg would not need to bear so much responsibility, and correspondingly, Facebook would not make such a big mistake.

Blockchain goes far beyond saving Mark Zuckerberg. It will make a release of applications and decentralized storage of data become a reality. Blockchain will allow User ID system that goes beyond the lifecycle of a single platform (application) and independent data system become feasible. Each Internet user’s value can be respected and recognized with blockchain technology. Users start to own things using the private key and digital wallet which means their digital value would not be lost when an application disappears or changes. As time goes by, people would be able to outline their complete online digital behavior asset.

Merculet is a blockchain project that can help global companies. It uses blockchain technology to improve entrepreneurial companies to quickly embrace the utility token operating method and thus enjoy rapid and active growth. Merculet has built an attention value based Internet called Merculet Attention Value Network (utility token: MVP) which connects the demand side and supply side of attention to promote the effective transfer of the value of the Internet. There are three core parts in this value-based Internet: 1) UAV (User Attention Value) evaluation system that scientifically assess the value of user’s attention and can seamlessly integrate with traditional reward-point systems; 2) UAT (User Attention Utility Token) which allows entrepreneurs to issue their utility tokens to reward users, and enabling the synergy and the value exchange between entrepreneurs based on the MVP utility token; 3) Open Content Platform which is based on consensus and driven by utility tokens, it solves the sources of user attention problem and motivate all the parties to participate actively in creating the positive cycle of the global content ecosystem.

Merculet allows large enterprises and massive users to enter into the blockchain era and value-based Internet era as fast as possible. Every ordinary user would have their blockchain ID very easily. They would put data about their Internet user behavior partially onto the blockchain, which helps every ordinary user to gain his/her value. It will also lay a solid foundation for the large-scale data system in the distributed business community.

In the Facebook era, the value of companies belongs to companies, the value of users also belongs to companies. However, in future blockchain era, the value of users belongs to users while the value of companies will be shared with users and belong to them as well. This is the logic of blockchain and Merculet.

In the near future, it is very likely that there will no longer be monolithic monopolies. Decentralized industrial civilization may not produce icons like Mark Zuckerberg again, however, if we are going to welcome a flourishing, vibrant and dynamic Internet era, isn’t that even better?