Opinion by: Chris Jenkins, adviser to Pocket Community
Tim Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient of the World Broad Internet is lifeless. As a substitute of an open and accessible world data system, the net is managed by centralized world information conglomerates, which don’t simply limit free speech but additionally monetize your information as a value of entry. Web2 companies have constructed walled gardens with large data asymmetry between firms and customers.
Blockchain-based decentralized tech challenges the established order, providing a substitute for Web2’s closed-source infrastructure.
It allows builders and engineers to construct a censorship-resistant and accessible open-data net to champion the reason for free speech. Open-source expertise creates a paradigmatic shift in a good and inclusive web the place centralized net firms received’t dictate the phrases.
A imaginative and prescient deferred
In 1989, Berners-Lee’s invention created a digital house for collaboration, sharing and studying from each other. The net’s first iteration was primarily based on openness, the place anybody may contribute, entry data, work collectively, and revel in the identical alternatives.
The web is now not free in 2025. Capital’s brute pressure has emboldened centralized firms to train authoritarian management over information and knowledge flows.
Sadly, these firms have acquired their energy and assets from unaware customers who unknowingly contributed to their capital accumulation methods. Web2 firms surreptitiously acquire information from customers with out truthful compensation and use that as a weapon to regulate consumer conduct.
Companies harness consumer information to coach opaque algorithms and deploy data “discoverability” to form customers’ beliefs and feelings. This follow is seen primarily on centralized social media platforms equivalent to Fb, Instagram and X, with a number of scandals and pending litigations eroding consumer belief.
For instance, in June 2024, Meta, the father or mother firm of Fb and Instagram, received 11 complaints from European Union members. The complaints involved utilizing private information like posts and pictures to coach Meta’s AI fashions with out consent, violating EU privateness legal guidelines.
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The Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated how firms mine information to form political views and election outcomes. These firms additionally assemble pre-determined narratives and form market conduct by selling or subverting curated studies, generally shaping public perspectives on health and financial information.
Beneath its Digital Markets Act, the European Fee has initiated a noncompliance investigation into Apple, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet’s practices. Meta has additionally incurred a $1.3 billion advantageous for failing to adjust to privateness laws.
On this setting, “free speech” stays a far-fetched dream as a result of the complete tech stack is hostile to accessibility and openness. To comprehend Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient, apps should use a decentralized tech stack and be constructed from the bottom up on an open structure.
Make the web free (once more)
An app’s tech stack consists of its back and front ends, information storage and Content material Supply Community (CDN). Web2 platforms rely on a centralized tech stack that places free speech in danger, whereas most blockchain-powered apps leverage a censorship-resistant decentralized tech stack with excessive uptime.
Some decentralized purposes (DApps) construct their entrance finish on a decentralized interface. Most of their again finish, nevertheless, continues to be caught on centralized data infrastructure.
For instance, regardless of their censorship vulnerabilities and single failure factors, decentralized purposes (DApps) typically use centralized cloud providers and data hosting platforms. All these assault vectors make initiatives like Twister Money topic to the altering moods of state actors.
Shifting to open-source protocols for distributed information storage like InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin upholds the free speech philosophy on DApps. These protocols supply a censorship-resistant, tamper-proof storage facility that is still accessible with out arbitrary outages.
DApps additionally use centralized distant process name (RPC) suppliers to produce information from the back-end to the front-end interface, particularly throughout a number of networks. However any outage or assault, like the one on X, can result in downtime, inaccuracies, information gaps and disconnected data flows. If it doesn’t appear to be a lot, keep in mind downtime or inaccuracies in decentralized finance can price billions.
Decentralized protocols keep away from these conditions by reworking information accessibility and switch channels with unbiased node operators. Information queries are distributed throughout the community, eliminating any single level of failure and offering uninterrupted information availability. Extra importantly, it safeguards free speech rights as a result of no single node can block or impede information stream, and the community stays accessible even when a number of nodes go offline.
CDNs, one more essential part for serving consumer requests, can turn out to be inaccessible as a result of market strain or political affect. Opaque choices from closed-door conferences dictate information flows on CDNs with none certainty in data flows.
Begin with the fundamentals
Decentralized protocols take away the necessity for centralized decision-making by enabling apps to straight entry information with out intermediaries. These permissionless protocols join open-source information and repair suppliers with customers and purposes, eradicating human interplay and related manufactured issues.
Blockchain-powered platforms lay the inspiration for a decentralized tech stack that promotes free speech and isn’t managed by centralized Web2 firms. These permissionless protocols construct an open-source world and return the web to Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient of a worldwide and accessible community.
Opinion by: Chris Jenkins, adviser to Pocket Community.
This text is for normal data functions and isn’t supposed to be and shouldn’t be taken as authorized or funding recommendation. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed listed here are the creator’s alone and don’t essentially replicate or characterize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
