Blockchain is the Future of Social Media Privacy

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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The New York Times (Archive page with no auto-start video) has a good handle on what has to happen next with social media, and that is to remove its ownership of your information from the companies that push it out, and place it back in the hands of the owners. Of course, you could choose to just not use it as well. Problem solved. But it seems the #DeleteFacebook movement was little more than a hashtag.


“People feel the need to move away from something like Facebook and toward something that allows them to have ownership of their own data,” said Ryan Shea, a co-founder of Blockstack, a New York company working with blockchain technology.

“Everything is moving toward people saying, ‘I want all the benefits of the internet, but I want to protect my privacy and my security,’” he said. “The only thing I know that can reconcile those things is the blockchain.”
 
A social network that anyone could pick up and use that incorporated blockchain technology would be a hit. The problem is it would have to be very easy to use and connect with others with little to no technical knowledge for it to be a success.
 
Rahh said:
A social network that anyone could pick up and use that incorporated blockchain technology would be a hit. The problem is it would have to be very easy to use and connect with others with little to no technical knowledge for it to be a success.
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Wait wait wait .........

Exactly what is it they are talking about embedding into blockchain?

I can't get the page to open from Kyle's link.

I am just wondering how, from a privacy perspective, you would implement blockchain because it's my understanding that the power of blockchain is to essentially spread it around everywhere so that thousands of different users can all validate that something matches verifying it's integrity. But that means you have to spread that something around everywhere so ..... how does privacy fit in again?
 
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Archive URL not responding. Would be nice to have to original URL too.
 
lcpiper said:
Wait wait wait .........

Exactly what is it they are talking about embedding into blockchain?

I can't get the page to open from Kyle's link.

I am just wondering how, from a privacy perspective, you would implement blockchain because it's my understanding that the power of blockchain is to essentially spread it around everywhere so that thousands of different users can all validate that something matches verifying it's integrity. But that means you have to spread that something around everywhere so ..... how does privacy fit in again?
Click to expand...

Was going to ask this as well. The principal purpose of blockchain is immutable trust, which is great for democratizing fraud prevention (or really anything that requires concensus). It says nothing about privacy or even anonymity. There ARE blockchain implementations that provide that, like Monero, but those were designed specifically to do just that. This article is speaking in very general terms though, which begs the question of how "blockchain", in general, is going to provide privacy.
 
lcpiper said:
Wait wait wait .........

Exactly what is it they are talking about embedding into blockchain?

I can't get the page to open from Kyle's link.

I am just wondering how, from a privacy perspective, you would implement blockchain because it's my understanding that the power of blockchain is to essentially spread it around everywhere so that thousands of different users can all validate that something matches verifying it's integrity. But that means you have to spread that something around everywhere so ..... how does privacy fit in again?
Click to expand...

I think the main thing blockchain provides is control. Eliminating the "trusted" intermediary (e.g. Facebook) and thus the license we all provide them to use our information is a big step in the right direction. With the middle man removed, there is no one to misuse or sell your data, other than yourself. Theoretically I am sure you could add similar controls to how people you share your profile with can share your data, in turn, or functionality to delete (or I guess scrub) your data if you want (since inability to delete is usually a feature of this tech). And on the flipside, there is no one to blame other than yourself if you share your info with people you shouldn't, or if you fail to adequately secure your private key. And there is the potential for added value in that you can monetize yourself, if you want.

With Facebook we either have to basically accept whatever terms they offer or delete our account. (And even after deleting, it is questionable what they hold on to.) At a minimum we need a high profile, high privacy competitor to enter the space if for no other reason than to make Facebook significantly up its game.
 
So, based on my understanding of the technology, the fundamental principle of blockchain is distributed redundancy.

I can see it's potential in narrow and limited scenarios, but to see it used as if it's a revolutionary element that needs to be incorporated into everything, well that just sounds stupid to me.

Now if I am missing something then by all means share, I would rather know what's correct about it. But if I am fundamentally correct, then this tech is the second coming of other great ideas that were fundamentally flawed and doomed to narrow and specific applications.
 
illram said:
I think the main thing blockchain provides is control. Eliminating the "trusted" intermediary (e.g. Facebook) and thus the license we all provide them to use our information is a big step in the right direction. With the middle man removed, there is no one to misuse or sell your data, other than yourself. Theoretically I am sure you could add similar controls to how people you share your profile with can share your data, in turn, or functionality to delete (or I guess scrub) your data if you want (since inability to delete is usually a feature of this tech). And on the flip-side, there is no one to blame other than yourself if you share your info with people you shouldn't, or if you fail to adequately secure your private key. And there is the potential for added value in that you can monetize yourself, if you want.

With Facebook we either have to basically accept whatever terms they offer or delete our account. (And even after deleting, it is questionable what they hold on to.) At a minimum we need a high profile, high privacy competitor to enter the space if for no other reason than to make Facebook significantly up its game.
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Wait, the purpose of blockchain, at least based on my understanding of it in cryptocurrency applications, is that everyone who is mining is downloading the chain, and the chain holds the full transaction history.

Now what are we talking about in say a facebook implementation designed around privacy? Are we going to store everyone's account information in the blockchain, and who, and how many blockchain "custodians" will be working to maintain the data integrity (which is what blockchain does right), and then how many must all have their security up to snuff in order to protect the security of the blockchain data?

Now this is thee account information, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to content. Are people thinking we should also store content in this manner because that is amazing. Look, either way you are talking about increasing network load and storage capacity by huge levels. And it doesn't actually secure the data from the data holders, it only maintains the integrity of the data, not the security of it.

Again, if I am missing something ......


EDIT: Oh, and by the way, there is that additional option that some people still maintain .... never get suckered into the damned Facebook Account to begin with.
 
lcpiper said:
Wait, the purpose of blockchain, at least based on my understanding of it in cryptocurrency applications, is that everyone who is mining is downloading the chain, and the chain holds the full transaction history.

Now what are we talking about in say a facebook implementation designed around privacy? Are we going to store everyone's account information in the blockchain, and who, and how many blockchain "custodians" will be working to maintain the data integrity (which is what blockchain does right), and then how many must all have their security up to snuff in order to protect the security of the blockchain data?

Now this is thee account information, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to content. Are people thinking we should also store content in this manner because that is amazing. Look, either way you are talking about increasing network load and storage capacity by huge levels. And it doesn't actually secure the data from the data holders, it only maintains the integrity of the data, not the security of it.

Again, if I am missing something ......


EDIT: Oh, and by the way, there is that additional option that some people still maintain .... never get suckered into the damned Facebook Account to begin with.
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Blockchain is just kinda a buzzword here. Look at a coin like zcash or monero to see how a privacy aspect can be added to make transactions invisible. That same type of thing could be applied to a network like this however a network like this would be FAR diferdiff then any crypto currency out there. Just about every compute work can be made into a blockchain.
 
illram said:
At a minimum we need a high profile, high privacy competitor to enter the space if for no other reason than to make Facebook significantly up its game.
Click to expand...

Good luck with that if social media regulation gets pushed through. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will wind up being the best thing that ever happened to Facebook. It sheer size and scale already make it notoriously difficult to compete against (assuming you're allowed to compete, instead of just bought out), stacking regulatory capture on top of that will make all but impossible.
 
cdabc123 said:
Blockchain is just kinda a buzzword here. Look at a coin like zcash or monero to see how a privacy aspect can be added to make transactions invisible. That same type of thing could be applied to a network like this however a network like this would be FAR diferdiff then any crypto currency out there. Just about every compute work can be made into a blockchain.
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So I think there is a basic difference between making a transaction invisible or anonymizing the transaction players, and securing data within the blockchain from those who maintain the blockchain. Do you get what I am saying?

If the blockchain holds all user account information, and I am in the blockchain maintenance list of actors, what is it about blockchain that prevents me from extracting all the account data I wish?

Now if the idea is the cut-out the "Facebook, Google, etc" players and maybe it's me and my friends that all maintain each other's blockchain, that's possible, but one bad egg, one compromised machine and all of a sudden you have another player "helping" with your blockchain, a friend of a friend is ....... someone else with our data.

I think it's extremely important for people not to confuse security with integrity, or confidentiality.

Any holder of blockchain data has access to that data. It's much like gaining physical access to a computer system, if you can get your hands on it, it's no longer secure. This is why IT departments that manage company mobile devices usually rely on a remote wipe capability. If an employee looses a device, they call it into their IT security people and they just remotely wipe the device, hopefully before the thieves can access the data. Add to this remote storage of the data itself so that as little as possible is actually maintained on the device.

So you should be able to see my concern, spreading the data around just puts it into more people's hands. They may not easily be able to change what's held in the blockchain, but they can extract it, particularly if they get themselves added into the list of authorized data holders of the blockchain data.

And how does that whole 6 degrees of separation thing play in here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

This concept suggests that as soon as your "friends list" grows beyond a very few, everyone will be connected through everyone else, the blockchain grows exponentially, soon it's a world wide unified blockchain. You would need datacenter power to manage it. I'm not sure you are going to get very far away from what we have now.

Perhaps I am too ignorant of it all to see the methods available to pull this off. But social networking seems to imply networked data and in the context of blockchain, networked maintainers of blockchain data, great for integrity, not so great for security.
 
The blockchain doent mean all people need to have all data and I don't think that would be remotely practical when talking about something like a social media network. The data could be split up through alot of computers (think Tor) and the block chain could be used to locate said data and allow the owner to modify it as well as allow certain people to access it. Mining can be storage plus compute based in order to make sure it stays decentralized.
 
So basically instead of FB data mining their own servers, they'll have to mine the data from everyone's computer (by following the chains) since BC just distributes the data all over the place (or if not FB maybe Google or Microsoft or someone who is already on most computers)?

And instead of say FB who could control their electrical use at a few points and hopefully use renewable sources and efficiency of large scale the data is processed all over the world in a highly inefficient manner.

Wouldn't be easier if FB just gives people better control of their data, or offers a high privacy paid option?
 
lcpiper said:
So I think there is a basic difference between making a transaction invisible or anonymizing the transaction players, and securing data within the blockchain from those who maintain the blockchain. Do you get what I am saying?

If the blockchain holds all user account information, and I am in the blockchain maintenance list of actors, what is it about blockchain that prevents me from extracting all the account data I wish?

Now if the idea is the cut-out the "Facebook, Google, etc" players and maybe it's me and my friends that all maintain each other's blockchain, that's possible, but one bad egg, one compromised machine and all of a sudden you have another player "helping" with your blockchain, a friend of a friend is ....... someone else with our data.

I think it's extremely important for people not to confuse security with integrity, or confidentiality.

Any holder of blockchain data has access to that data. It's much like gaining physical access to a computer system, if you can get your hands on it, it's no longer secure. This is why IT departments that manage company mobile devices usually rely on a remote wipe capability. If an employee looses a device, they call it into their IT security people and they just remotely wipe the device, hopefully before the thieves can access the data. Add to this remote storage of the data itself so that as little as possible is actually maintained on the device.

So you should be able to see my concern, spreading the data around just puts it into more people's hands. They may not easily be able to change what's held in the blockchain, but they can extract it, particularly if they get themselves added into the list of authorized data holders of the blockchain data.

And how does that whole 6 degrees of separation thing play in here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

This concept suggests that as soon as your "friends list" grows beyond a very few, everyone will be connected through everyone else, the blockchain grows exponentially, soon it's a world wide unified blockchain. You would need datacenter power to manage it. I'm not sure you are going to get very far away from what we have now.

Perhaps I am too ignorant of it all to see the methods available to pull this off. But social networking seems to imply networked data and in the context of blockchain, networked maintainers of blockchain data, great for integrity, not so great for security.
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A miner can't access your user account without your private key. No one can. It's really that simple.
 
illram said:
A miner can't access your user account without your private key. No one can. It's really that simple.
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Doesn't have a thing to do with the discussion or what you are quoting.
.
 
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Social media is soooo four years ago though.

I was joking with a business partner at a recent expo on how we should rebrand to incorporate "blockchain" in the name. Investors seem to like fads that feed their hivemind.

First it was Social Media and they blindly threw money at any and all companies that flirted with them like their name was Sapphire and it was the last dance of the night. Then it was "Drones", then "AI", and now "Blockchain."

I talked with a company at the same expo that appeared to be playing the name game .. they had "AI" in their name. They all but admitted they didn't use AI. It was just a routing algorithm. No "smart", no learning.

Stop the madness.
 
Spidey329 said:
...I talked with a company at the same expo that appeared to be playing the name game .. they had "AI" in their name. They all but admitted they didn't use AI. It was just a routing algorithm. No "smart", no learning...
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"We started as a bird-watching community for sharing pictures and cataloging migration patterns. We were about to go under until Evan added _Social Media_ to our mission statement. The money wouldn't stop after that." - Twitter CEO
 
The way things are going, we'll be eating blockchain as well.
 
Spidey329 said:
Social media is soooo four years ago though.

I was joking with a business partner at a recent expo on how we should rebrand to incorporate "blockchain" in the name. Investors seem to like fads that feed their hivemind.

First it was Social Media and they blindly threw money at any and all companies that flirted with them like their name was Sapphire and it was the last dance of the night. Then it was "Drones", then "AI", and now "Blockchain."

I talked with a company at the same expo that appeared to be playing the name game .. they had "AI" in their name. They all but admitted they didn't use AI. It was just a routing algorithm. No "smart", no learning.

Stop the madness.
Click to expand...

There has actually been several scams where startups included the word blockchain to random processes and investors sank them in money. After getting a few hundred thousands to millions in easy money they just go offline without even an intention to do something.
 
I don't think people realize that blockchain technology is going to have a bad and unintended consequence. This is the first step in everyone basically having a "social security number" to be online.
 
I don't know.

Do you really want that Nazi-sex-trafficing-terrorist to be able to hide while recruiting your daughter to blow herself up at a gay pride parade?

Making everything anonymous has downsides.

Then there is having millions of people exchanging all that data to verify it.

Just seems to have downsides which are pretty large. Then again, I am a full fledge collector of tin foil hats.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I don't think people realize that blockchain technology is going to have a bad and unintended consequence. This is the first step in everyone basically having a "social security number" to be online.
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Hadn't thought of that, I think you're right. Might not be a SSN but definitely some kind of assigned id that isn't IP or MAC based.
 
Just regulate the social media networks instead of using buzzwords that don't do anything. If that isn't enough use the monopoly/market size/anti-competition/open-access to just break them up or nullify their market advantage. Far more effective than hypothetical marketing BS.

The EU is already pushing through updated privacy laws which is basically where all of Facebook's "new" privacy updates are coming from. Next the probably are going to have to keep track of all the companies that consume the data and would be legally required to chase after the companies and if the data is abused or misused or not deleted when the user requests from all recorded commercial consumers of the data they get multi-billion dollar fines.
 
Wasn't bitcoin recently revealed to be a kind of open book to someone like the FBI/NSA and that the transactions and users are permanently documented in the 'blockchain'. It is less private than gov't currency.
 
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