Opinion by: Chris Jenkins, adviser to Pocket Community
Tim Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient of the World Vast Net is lifeless. As an alternative of an open and accessible international data system, the online is managed by centralized international knowledge conglomerates, which don’t simply prohibit free speech but additionally monetize your knowledge as a worth of entry. Web2 corporations have constructed walled gardens with huge data asymmetry between corporations and customers.
Blockchain-based decentralized tech challenges the established order, providing an alternative choice to Web2’s closed-source infrastructure.
It allows builders and engineers to construct a censorship-resistant and accessible open-data internet to champion the reason for free speech. Open-source expertise creates a paradigmatic shift in a good and inclusive web the place centralized internet corporations gained’t dictate the phrases.
A imaginative and prescient deferred
In 1989, Berners-Lee’s invention created a digital area for collaboration, sharing and studying from each other. The online’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 drive has emboldened centralized corporations to train authoritarian management over knowledge and data flows.
Sadly, these corporations have acquired their energy and sources from unaware customers who unknowingly contributed to their capital accumulation methods. Web2 corporations surreptitiously acquire knowledge from customers with out honest compensation and use that as a weapon to manage person habits.
Firms harness person knowledge to coach opaque algorithms and deploy data “discoverability” to form customers’ beliefs and feelings. This apply is seen primarily on centralized social media platforms akin to Fb, Instagram and X, with a number of scandals and pending litigations eroding person belief.
For instance, in June 2024, Meta, the dad or mum firm of Fb and Instagram, received 11 complaints from European Union members. The complaints involved utilizing private knowledge 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 corporations mine knowledge to form political views and election outcomes. These corporations additionally assemble pre-determined narratives and form market habits by selling or subverting curated experiences, typically shaping public perspectives on health and financial knowledge.
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 effective for failing to adjust to privateness rules.
On this atmosphere, “free speech” stays a far-fetched dream as a result of your entire 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, knowledge storage and Content material Supply Community (CDN). Web2 platforms rely upon 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 functions (DApps) construct their entrance finish on a decentralized interface. Most of their again finish, nonetheless, continues to be caught on centralized data infrastructure.
For instance, regardless of their censorship vulnerabilities and single failure factors, decentralized functions (DApps) typically use centralized cloud providers and data hosting platforms. A majority of these assault vectors make initiatives like Twister Money topic to the altering moods of state actors.
Shifting to open-source protocols for distributed knowledge storage like InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin upholds the free speech philosophy on DApps. These protocols provide a censorship-resistant, tamper-proof storage facility that continues to be accessible with out arbitrary outages.
DApps additionally use centralized distant process name (RPC) suppliers to provide knowledge 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, knowledge gaps and disconnected data flows. If it doesn’t appear to be a lot, bear in mind downtime or inaccuracies in decentralized finance can price billions.
Decentralized protocols keep away from these conditions by remodeling knowledge accessibility and switch channels with unbiased node operators. Information queries are distributed throughout the community, eliminating any single level of failure and offering uninterrupted knowledge availability. Extra importantly, it safeguards free speech rights as a result of no single node can block or impede knowledge stream, and the community stays accessible even when a number of nodes go offline.
CDNs, one more essential element for serving person requests, can turn out to be inaccessible as a consequence of market strain or political affect. Opaque selections from closed-door conferences dictate knowledge 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 immediately entry knowledge with out intermediaries. These permissionless protocols join open-source knowledge and repair suppliers with customers and functions, eradicating human interplay and related manufactured issues.
Blockchain-powered platforms lay the muse for a decentralized tech stack that promotes free speech and isn’t managed by centralized Web2 corporations. These permissionless protocols construct an open-source world and return the web to Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient of a world 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 below are the writer’s alone and don’t essentially mirror or characterize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
