Why Do Social Network Founders Move Towards Blockchain Technology?

During the last few months, both Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, have been showing interest in blockchain technology. But is there a particular reason why these two individuals are approaching to the blockchain market? Michael J. Casey, chairman of CoinDesk’s advisory board, tries to understand why they are “Warming to blockchain.”

Distributed Ledger Technology For Social Media

According to Preston McAfee, a recognized economy that worked in firms such as Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, software engineers tend to favor centralization. These individuals consider centralization as the most efficient design principle for computing systems.

Although blockchain technology offers better social outcomes, the networks are inefficient compared to centralized systems. In the last months and years, users in social media platforms started to pay closer attention to the data they provide and how firms gather this information. Thus, this is forcing companies to rethink their strategies.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, informed that they might embrace end-to-end encryption of users’ data on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Moreover, Zuckerberg talked about using blockchain technology and enable decentralized logins without having to use servers to authenticate these attempts to log in. Additionally, the platform could be working on its own digital currency that would target the remittance market in India.

David Chaum, a recognized crypto pioneer, says that Zuckerberg’s attempts to embrace blockchain technology are just a PR message. However, the firm has already fired some executive related to the development of centralized data-gathering models and algorithms. It is worth mentioning that Facebook has also been hiring experts in blockchain technology during the last months.

This shows that these firms are now starting to think about how to decentralize their models and avoid depending on all the data they have been gathering from users during all these years. But, is it possible for such companies to profit and sustain their business model free from control by the center?

Jack Dorsey has embraced Bitcoin (BTC) and the Lightning Network (LN) on different occasions. This could be also related to the fact that the platform is trying to potentiate the usage of virtual currencies and decentralized networks as well.