Author: Daniel Graf

Last week we explored information-sharing in the digital age, as well as the wider implications across news platforms and into politics. We also looked at polls regarding the trust levels we had, long before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and into the privacy of data we expose on Facebook and Google. In part two of our series, we address systemic issues and alternatives to the ad-revenue model.

Mark Zuckerberg Copyright 2016 Facebook

Many of the keen observers who passed around a now well-known shot of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, may not have been totally shocked when the Cambridge Analytica scandal made headlines last month. The photo revealed, as many readers may remember, that Zuckerberg covered the webcam and the microphone jack on his laptop with tape. Read more on why, from the New York Times, among other publications.

If that moment weren’t revealing enough, news of the Cambridge Analytica data breach is prompting a wave of users, as well as Congress, to take a deeper look into the inner workings of Facebook and other social media platforms. Many users are adjusting their privacy settings, and running into a few surprises along the way. There are also articles coming out about how to delete your timeline. Both Google and Facebook have launched web pages devoted to deleting your search history, timelines, or posts.

So, just to be clear, this article is not a pile on. The entire culture is finally taking a broader look at systematic issues across social media. It has a lot to do with the user demand for instant gratification. It also has a lot to do with systemic flaws in the ad-revenue model, which we also covered on Medium.

Do you recall those Terms of Use agreements that you probably, barely, if at all read while registering for various social media tools? It might be hitting home now that you rushed to electronically sign away most of the rights you had to your data when you rushed through to electronically sign up. Perhaps this is why there are growing rumblings that the paradigm needs to shift, and that the blockchain promises to be a better place to house and manage a new social media platform. The thinking is that distributed ledger technology provides users with control over personal data, along with the rights to monetize social media elements, or not.

That’s not unlike the Decentralized News Network (DNN) mission. DNN’s goal is to harness the power of the blockchain to create a news platform and encourage the dissemination of factual, unbiased political news by incentivizing accountability at all levels of the news consumption process.