Introduced by Sanjeev Verma, Blockchain and Mobile Security Architect at Samsung Electronics. Concept: To improve the quality of social media platform content, this project will utilize Blockchain based Social Currency to regulate social media platform such as Twitter.”
Problem or Why?: Social media platforms are free for all platforms. It is a great media to share information and interact with each other. Most of the social platforms started with this objective in mind. However, the quality of posts degenerated over time due to lack of regulation. The value of a social platform such as Twitter depends on the quality of posts—attracting more advertising dollars.
Here are some of the issues with Twitter:
- Use of fake accounts—sometimes by the same person.
- Use of Trolls to bring down the reputation of someone—some politicians use paid Trolls against their political opponents.
- Abusive & Threatening Posts.
- Sharing of fake News, fake Photos, fake Videos
- People take pride ( social status) in the number of followers—businesses have sprung that create fake followers.
This list is not comprehensive—this discourages people and some people often leave Twitter due to harassment.
Solution:
Blockchain based cryptocurrency can be used to self-regulate social media such as Twitter. Cryptocurrency is something of value—in case of social media cryptocurrency is “reputation”. People participating in the social media such as Twitter should be awarded for their good behavior—they should also be punished for their bad behavior. Also, they should be awarded for improving the quality of the platform through their posts. Probably people can be even further incentivized to use their earned “social cryptocurrency” to buy products advertised in the platform. One can use machine learning algorithms also to flag abusive posts.
Benefit:
A regulated platform will improve the quality of content shared through social media—attracting more people to the platform. This will in turn attract more advertising dollars to the platform.