Why TikTok Should Be OnChain

Imagine a satellite wherever your integer individuality is genuinely your own, wherever each post, connection, and enactment isn’t locked wrong the walls of a firm level but exists arsenic an hold of your idiosyncratic autonomy. This isn’t a utopian vision, it’s the indispensable improvement of societal media successful an epoch wherever integer sovereignty is simply a cardinal right.

For decades, we person unknowingly traded our integer independency for the convenience of centralized platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, these platforms person shaped our integer lives, yet they relation much similar gilded cages. Every station we create, each narration we cultivate, each speech we prosecute successful is yet controlled by corporations that tin modify, monetize, oregon erase our integer beingness with a azygous argumentation alteration oregon algorithmic decision.

A New Future for TikTok

As TikTok decides connected its ownership future, Project Liberty has teamed up with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and a pioneer successful online assemblage building, and Kevin O'Leary, renowned capitalist and entrepreneur known for his relation connected Shark Tank, to instrumentality the level on-chain. Why?

At its core, this is astir much than conscionable TikTok. It’s astir who controls the integer spaces wherever billions connect, create, and devour information. For excessively long, the internet’s astir vibrant communities person been shaped –and yet governed– by a fistful of corporations. Project Liberty is starring the question to alteration that, ensuring that societal networks service the radical who powerfulness them, not conscionable those who ain them.

The cardinal to this displacement is Frequency, a public, permissionless blockchain developed by Project Liberty’s exertion squad and designed specifically for high-volume societal networking, reinforces the instauration of a user-driven internet, prioritizing interoperability, information sovereignty, and resilience against centralized control. Together, these initiatives purpose to determination societal media distant from firm ownership and toward an open, user-controlled model.

TikTok, for each its taste impact, is nary different. As the statement implicit its ownership and information practices continues, the larger contented remains unresolved: should a azygous entity, whether a authorities oregon a corporation, power the societal cloth of a generation? What’s astatine involvement isn’t conscionable who owns TikTok but whether a level of its standard tin run extracurricular the confines of centralized control. If it is to beryllium reimagined wrong a decentralized framework, it volition necessitate a instauration built connected existent interoperability, user-owned data, and unfastened governance. This is wherever Frequency comes in.

From TikTok to Bluesky: Building a Decentralized Future

The question of TikTok’s aboriginal highlights a overmuch larger displacement successful however we deliberation astir societal media. The request for decentralization is nary longer theoretical, it’s an urgent necessity. Bluesky, an open-source societal media project, is 1 effort to reply that call.

Bluesky is not conscionable different platform, it represents an effort to redefine the narration betwixt users and their integer identities. But existent integer liberation demands much than bully intentions, it requires a structural committedness to afloat decentralization. It offers a glimpse into what a decentralized societal web could look like, but cardinal vulnerabilities remain.

Bluesky, for each its promise, inactive relies connected structural choke points that airs a hazard to its semipermanent decentralization. Storage nodes mostly stay centralized nether the power of Bluesky PBC oregon 3rd enactment providers, meaning idiosyncratic information is inactive housed successful locations that could go points of control. Relay and Firehose systems, liable for information distribution, stay concentrated successful the hands of a few. And portion it is affirmative that Bluesky has implemented the W3C modular for Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), the PLC (Public Ledger of Credentials) directory is besides centralized. These whitethorn look similar tiny method details astatine present, but past has repeatedly shown however seemingly insignificant method decisions tin go the precise mechanisms done which powerfulness is consolidated and autonomy is eroded.

Frequency, the Backbone of a Decentralized Social Web

This is wherever Frequency enters the picture, not conscionable arsenic a blockchain, but arsenic an wholly caller model for integer individuality and societal media governance. Frequency isn’t simply modifying the existent model; it is rethinking however we interact online from the crushed up. Instead of cardinal authorities dictating terms, Frequency ensures that users — not platforms — clasp the keys to their integer lives.

Decentralization is much than a method shift, it’s astir restoring cardinal rights. Users indispensable person the quality to assistance entree to their data, but conscionable arsenic crucially, they indispensable person the powerfulness to revoke it. The relationships they physique online — followers, connections, conversations — indispensable beryllium to them, not to a level that tin manipulate oregon erase them astatine will.

Decentralization With Purpose

Frequency operates connected the rule of minimal, purposeful decentralization which makes agelong word sustainability of the ecosystem astatine colonisation standard viable. The lone information stored on-chain is what is indispensable to warrant idiosyncratic information rights. This plan attack allows for businesslike concatenation optimization focused connected halfway societal events, chiefly enactment related to account, graph, and connection primitives.This absorption connected halfway societal allows for tokenized incentives to beryllium designed astir absorption of web capacity, with circumstantial incentives for creators, consumers and different much circumstantial actors near to higher levels of the exertion stack.

The committedness of a user-owned net is incomplete without robust safeguards that support idiosyncratic data. Frequency ensures that users person cryptographic extortion implicit their information, on with granular controls that dictate however their information is shared. At the aforesaid time, they should person the flexibility to enforce platform-specific restrictions, ensuring that their contented appears lone successful the integer spaces wherever they privation it to beryllium seen. Further, they indispensable beryllium capable to delete their contented astatine their discretion. They should besides person the powerfulness to restrict contented to circumstantial platforms if they take to bash so.

This attack straight addresses the cardinal roadblocks that person prevented erstwhile attempts astatine decentralization from scaling. Frequency ensures that nary azygous entity — not adjacent its ain node operators—has the powerfulness to change oregon censor idiosyncratic data. It provides a decentralized backup of Bluesky’s Firehose, ensuring that user-generated contented remains accessible beyond the power of a azygous party. Its architecture is designed not conscionable for ideological purity but for applicable sustainability and scalability, offering minimal latency and cost-efficient operations to guarantee the strategy remains viable for wide adoption.

Achieving Digital Self-Sovereignty

The net was meant to beryllium open, interconnected, and free. But today, we basal astatine a crossroads: either we proceed to trust connected corporate-controlled societal media, oregon we instrumentality the indispensable steps to make a much open, user-owned integer future.

Bluesky is simply a measurement forward, but without addressing its remaining points of centralization, it risks becoming conscionable different walled garden, possibly a somewhat much unfastened one, but inactive 1 wherever users deficiency existent control. TikTok presents an adjacent bigger challenge. The statement implicit its ownership is missing the point. The existent question isn’t who should ain TikTok, but whether immoderate societal media elephantine should beryllium owned astatine each successful the accepted sense. Decentralization offers a caller mode forward, 1 wherever platforms are built astir idiosyncratic sovereignty, alternatively than firm control.

With Frequency, we are moving 1 measurement person to reclaiming the archetypal committedness of the internet. True integer liberation requires breaking escaped from the information monopolies that person defined the societal media era. This isn’t conscionable a technological upgrade, it’s a indispensable displacement successful power.