#49 Crypto as insurance against the decisions of a few

Elon's decision last week to block all tweets with Substack links shows the power one person can have over a platform with millions of users. Of course, Elon owns Twitter and he can do whatever he likes, but the decision impacted thousands of creators who have built up large audiences and heavily rely on the platform. How could crypto and blockchain fix this?

One thing that crypto does really well is that it separates the protocol from the client. In a social media example, a protocol can be the service that stores usernames, posts, social graphs, and lets users post. While the client takes care of the feed, the algorithms, the user experience, and the product interface.

A decentralized social media protocol would have all of your followers, tweets, and the ability to send tweets with images, text, link or whatever you like. The protocols are hard to change and can only be altered with a majority vote.

The clients, on the other hand, can be easily changed and customized. Different clients can be built on top of one protocol. So one client might allow Substack links, but another might not. Users can change clients while they keep the core social graph (followers, tweets) with them at all times. That's really powerful.

While it's unpopular to talk about crypto right, the core technology has the power to be an insurance against the decisions of the few that affect the many.

I learned this from NotBoring.