Nikhil Raghuveera had this article in the Coin Telegraph:
Recent political developments in the United States demonstrate the critical challenges that centralized technology platforms pose to democracy — in stark contrast to the powerful role social media played in pro-democracy movements in the Middle East and Hong Kong. U.S. election misinformation and disinformation, as well as white nationalism, spread throughout online groups, and prominent political and social leaders found means to amplify falsehoods through technology platforms.
Within both the public eye and darker corners of the internet, organizers, including members of the Proud Boys, planned the storming of the U.S. Capitol to stop what they believed to be a rigged election. The U.S. events, however, are not isolated. They fit into a broader pattern of centralized social media platforms being used to promote violence, disinformation and insurrection as evidenced in places such as Myanmar and the Philippines.
A byproduct of these events, among others, has been heightened fear that more private decentralized and peer-to-peer, or P2P, technology will offer a new and more powerful tool for domestic terrorists. While these concerns are not unfounded, privacy-focused decentralized and P2P applications can, in fact, protect democratic governance and help us move away from centralized platforms. The key reason is that unlike centralized platforms, they are not in the business of creating echo chambers — targeting users with specific content that suits their interests and potentially amplifying harmful content in order to increase user engagement. This gives us a better way to manage social technology’s impact on public safety, similar to how we’ve previously governed more traditional forms of interaction such as speech, telephone calls and mail.
Read the full article here.
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