A decentralized internet was hailed as a way to dethrone Twitter and Facebook. But to the tech giants, the idea could unload some of their burdens.
By Nathaniel Popper Dec. 18, 2019. The New York Times.
SAN FRANCISCO — Not so long ago, the technology behind Bitcoin was seen in Silicon Valley as the best hope for challenging the enormous, centralized power of companies like Twitter and Facebook.
Now, in an unexpected twist, the internet giants think that technology could help them solve their many problems.
The chief executive of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, said last week that he hoped to fund the creation of software for social media that, inspired by the design of Bitcoin, would give Twitter less control over how people use the service and shift power toward users and outside programmers.
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The Web has steadily evolved into an ecosystem of large, corporate-controlled mega-platforms which intermediate speech online. In this report we explore two important ways structurally decentralized systems could help address this.
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