Mind your own business on Hive

I think a lot of people are confused about what Hive is, with many conflating the interfaces for the blockchain itself. Because of this, many seem to also misunderstand what it means to be censorship resistant, with people thinking that filtering at the interface level is censorship at the blockchain level.

This is not the case. Once something is written to the Hive blockchain, it is there for good immutably, or at least without a massive amount of consensus needing to be applied to change it, making it highly resistant, but nothing is necessarily impossible. Interfaces however are able to show and hide content in ways they see fit, which is currently done via tags on posts and tags on communities. But, this method is very limited and is prone to abuse of various kinds, including miscategorization of content. But, it also limits the usecase of the Hive blockchain for specific kinds of communities, by limiting the ability to granularly filter content.

Yesterday I proposed a custom JSON interface that would allow for better content management as well as hiding of content. People hear "hiding content" and think it is censorship - this is not the case on Hive, it is for filtering purposes as well as being able to control experience.

Hive is not a blogging site, it is a protocol like the internet itself. What this means is that there has to be the ability to separate content based on what kind of content it is. While a blogging site can essentially be a catchall for content of all kinds, it is untenable if the use case is to for example, have an interface geared for children's content. The ability to filter in and out is part of the requirements and this has to be possible with a high level of precision.

The reason that censorship on the other platforms is an issue is because there is centralized control of the recording medium itself. While we witness the censoring on the platform through various ways of banding, users have no access to what is stored there. This is different on Hive as what is recorded can be retrieved and filtered into a new interface.

For example, imagine if Twitter had an open database and a new platform could call all the content and accounts that they banned, to build a community of the banished. On Hive, that would be possible, where for example an interface could be created to call upon all blacklisted accounts.

What people need to remember is that communities on Hive are centralized, but the blockchain isn't. Splinterlands for example own their interface and the capabilities that their users have when interacting with it. This is the whole point of communities, ownership. This means that people are able to build their unique businesses upon the Hive blockchain, while still being able to control the experience of the user environment and gain the benefits and protections of Hive itself.

The Hive blockchain doesn't care what content it serves and the witnesses don't care which blocks they sign, but users do care what content they are presented and how they can interact with it. For example, at some point there is going to be the ability to subscribe to user contents, which means that a consumer can automatically pay an author. What this means is that content can then segment itself further with some being behind paywalls. To put something behind a paywall on a blockchain whilst still maintaining the benefits of immutability requires being able to hide it except when called upon.

This could be done in several ways and I am not technical enough to do it myself, but for example, an account that paywalls its content could issue a unique key to a subscriber that allows access rights by decrypting the content. If needed, the owner of the paywall would have the control to rescind access also, for example at the end of a subscription period.

This would allow things like Patreon, learning courses and something like Onlyfans or private rooms to be built upon Hive. This gives an account real ownership over their content. It also means that a far wider set of usecases can be built, as a company wouldn't have to trust their content to anyone, as they would always have control, yet still get the immutable benefits, with even decentralized video hosting starting to be developed on Hive through @threespeak

This isn't censorship, it is the expansion of censor-resistance as it lowers the reliance on others to serve information. Build the tools, optionality and template these interfaces and any half-competent user would be able to build an interface for themselves. These could then for example be housed in a larger interface that aggregates them. This means that a user would be able to appear on a specific platform, but still maintain absolute control of their content and even monetization. Because of the possibilities of Hive, a user would be able to break their "channel" away from the aggregator by rescinding rights and still maintain their fanbase through various structures without having to start from scratch. This is impossible on YouTube because "Your Channel" is actually Their Channel, and "Your Fans" are Their Users and they can flick off the switch at any time and there is very little that can be done, other than complain.

If for example, Twitter worked like Hive, the banning of Trump on Twitter wouldn't shut down his account, it would just stop it appearing on their interface. If Trump actually owned the account and all of his followers also owned their accounts, they could simply and quickly build a new interface that looks exactly like Twitter and grant access to everyone who wants it. But, no one owns their Twitter account, which means they don't own the content on there either. If Twitter wants to delete it, they can and it is within their rights to do so because they own their business.

Hive's position as censorship resistant doesn't mean that everything built on Hive has to appear everywhere, it means that there is protection for it from being washed away. It means that it can be recalled now or at any time in the future and with a little more development, it would be possible to extend the ownership model for content, communities and accounts even further.

We are in the early stages of moving from Web 2.0 to 3.0 and a lot of development and consideration needs to take place to underpin and secure it. Hive as a protocol is much like the protocols of the internet itself, where while everyone can have access, what they have access to is segmented based on many variables, including location, age and ability to pay. Hive can support thousands of business models and millions of users, but in order to do so, it has to be customizable to support content segmentation. This doesn't encroach on the fundamentals of recording to the blockchain for immutability, it affects the second-layer functionality and user experience.

Pretty much, all front ends everywhere are centralized, as they are managed by particular people and groups who do things like, pay for the server hosting. What I find interesting is how many people believe they have a right to be on any platform at all. However, the Hive blockchain is not owned by a single user or group, it is owned by all users and even someone without any stake can build for and connect a platform to it, populating it with whatever they choose - while the blockchain below keeps on recording and protecting everything written to it.

The core reason that censorship happens is because we put the power to decide what is seen in the hands of others, rather than take ownership of it ourselves. How you manage your account, is your business.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]