Decentralized social media is a hot topic due to censorship, tracking and control of the likes of Facebook and Twitter. With the release of Voice.com, I’d like to suggest another approach. I think Voice will be amazing and would compliment what I’m suggesting here by providing verified users. However, I think that what I’m suggesting here will be orders of magnitude more decentralized and censorship resistant than other things out there. 

https://youtu.be/Z4g_hqN0DvUHere's the video version of this. Scroll down for audio or just subscribe to the podcast :)

Decentralized Protocol Not Just Blockchain

The internet is built on some fundamental decentralized protocols. Examples of this are email, tcp/ip, rss, podcasts, wordpress? The distinction I’d like to make here is that a protocol, in this sense, is something that anyone can run and is compatible with anyone else running it. 

Take email, for example. I can set up a mail server on my computer at home. I can rent a server and run the mail server there. Or I can use a more centralized version such as gmail. All of these set-up use the same protocol and worth with each other. There are levels of decentralization and yes there’s some censorship by Email Service Providers, like gmail, but that is seen as a feature/benefit (spam filtering) that allows users to make a choice. 

Having a decentralized protocol (like rss) that interacts with a blockchain, rather than having it all run on a blockchain is the best scenario. 

Now, imagine open-source software, like wordpress that can be self hosted or hosted en masse. This software allows you to post content to a feed but it also allows you to read the feeds of others and comment/like the content of others.

So kind of like twitter as a protocol rather than twitter as a walled garden. 

Add to that blockchain, crypto and 

If Wordpress, TRSST and EOS had a Baby

Wordpress, as many people know, is both open-source publishing software (wordpress.org) and a hosted blogging platform (wordpress.com). Using a model similar to wordpress would have huge decentralization benefits. As outlined above, it would be more of a protocol that could be self-hosted or hosted. The difference for social would be that the software would include publishing and reading/aggregating. That’s something wordpress doesn’t currently do.

TRSST was an idea from 2013 that had a lot of traction starting out - raising $65k on kickstarter. I’ve checked in on the project every once in a while since I heard about it but it seems to have fizzled out due to lack of follow-through. The concept was to combine an RSS feed publisher with an RSS feed reader along with cryptography and bitcoin then mix it all together as an open-source, self-hosted twitter-like service with greater security. Their website is sadly no-longer but you can see their github and kickstarter. Here’s their whitepaper.

Using RSS was a great idea because it makes it backwards compatible with much of the web. 

So, this concept is to have an open-source software that publishes like wordpress and reads like google reader. 

How Blockchain Works with This

Next we introduce the EOS blockchain (or an EOSIO sidechain). 

This system would work best by using EOS accounts as the global account system for this software. Not only does it provide the account system but it tracks comments, likes, re-posts etc. 

This allows a user to have control over deleting and changing content. This is different than voice or murmur where you content is forever on chain. 

So when you post content you also send a transaction on chain that publishes the hash and other relevant meta data. This works as a global time-stamp and verification of the authorship of your posts. 

Publishing the full content and not just the hash could also be an option to provide copyright proof/immutability like what Wordproof does.

Publishing a comment or re-post would have similar on-chain effects to publi...