Why we need one more social network
It seems, that there are all kinds of social networks in the world that cover all possible requirements, fantasies, and desires: universal ones (Facebook), for short content (Twitter), for interaction (Telegram), for long video (YouTube), for short video (TikTok), for photos (Instagram), etc…
Why the hell do we need to even raise the question about yet another one social network?
If you study some resources like Quora or Reddit (which are social networks too), you won’t find any perceptible need or request for something new. Everything is covered. Isn’t it?
On the other hand there are a whole bunch of discussions regarding decentralized social networks in Web 3.0 and computer-science communities. There are even blockchains with the content in mind. Just a question: would you like to make your social media undeletable and pay for every post? For me, in most cases, it looks like a try to bring two things together without much practical sense or feasible implementation in the near future. Just dumb: let’s take social networks and blockchains and get something useful from their merge.
But there is no smoke without fire. There are really some troubles with the existing social networks.
The whole internet and Q&A social media in particular are full of articles and topics about how to manipulate content people see on their timelines. So, modern social networks, pursuing ads income, more and more show you something that your animal brain reacts on, instead of something that you consciously wanted to watch initially;
Social networks heavily manipulate the content you see, trying to squeeze maximum engagement from you to show more ads. Both sides suffer here: content consumers and content creators. Because as a consumer, you aren’t guaranteed that you will see something you wanted. At the same time creators sometimes need to even pay for ads to promote their content among existing followers and subscribers (crazy, yes?);
Personal data leaks can lead to horrible consequences, including access hijacking on resources where you use federated login from social networks;
In hands of people with malice intentions (like totalitarian governments) your data ends up being a weapon against you and your freedom (hello, VK and Yandex);
Before I tell you why I decided to build a new social network — ID Karma — I need to confess and give you a bit more context about my intentions and wider goals.
I’m an evangelist of self-sovereign identity principles. In short, the idea here is to digitize all your legal documents, and with your internet profiles and personal data, store them on your devices instead of corporation servers. This way you can protect your privacy and take away ownership of your personal data. But there is much of a chicken-and-egg problem in popularization of this approach.
Facing the desire to do something in the field of self-sovereign identity and observing problems with social media mentioned above, I made a tough or, better to say, reckless decision. I decided that the creation of a new social network — isn’t such a bad idea. Because SSI, instead of blockchains, can really empower social networks.
So I’m building the social network where:
you own your personal data (literally store it yourself),
you are sure that the content you created will reach intended people,
you are sure that you get exactly content you “requested”,
you can connect with influencers and businesses (and vice versa) without interruption..
At the same time, ID Karma as a social network isn't a fully geekalike web 3.0 solution, where you need to store all your and your peers’ content on your devices, or store your posts in the blockchain (which is costly and hard to manage). But when the content is stored on the ID Karma server, what is the difference from Facebook, for example? I can’t get access to your content and won't be able to use it, without your physical permission. So I can’t sell it or pass it to some malicious govs.
Do we need a new social network? I believe — yes.