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Content Summary
We will talk about the discussions about Bitclout, which we can summarize as a decentralized Twitter clone. What is Bitclout? and how to become a member of Bitclout? We will try to answer your questions.
Let’s start from the very beginning. The rise of digital with the Internet has brought a serious questioning about the value of artworks. For example, two hundred years ago, a painting by a known painter could find a buyer at a very high price thanks to its uniqueness. Owning that work of art was also a highly prestigious situation for its buyer. Then, these unique paintings continued to find buyers for much higher numbers today. But there was a serious problem awaiting new artists at the expense of art. Because now many artworks are produced digitally and since they are easily copied, a serious question mark was raised regarding the uniqueness and value of these artworks.
For this, they went to a way to sell some works, even digital, in limited numbers, but this did not find the expected return. Today, thanks to blockchain technology, it is now possible to market a digital product in a unique, one-off and visible way. So how will this be possible today, when digital arts are developing and art can reach every layer of society for the first time?
Let’s explain!
Blockchain Technology and Art
If you are interested in the field, you may have witnessed the news that some tweets are sold for very high fees thanks to a called NFT, as you have seen in the news before. Apart from that, you have come across with content that even for an architectural project in the virtual world, high prices are paid. Perhaps in the future, people will buy living spaces alongside real places, perhaps just to experience them with virtual reality technologies. There are many similar developments and the ethical and philosophical questions raised by these developments. What does it really mean to be able to sell a tweet or a house in the digital world with a called NFT with blockchain technology today, when there are serious debates about what art and artwork are? For this, it is necessary to briefly summarize exactly what blockchain technology does.
What Does The Blockchain Really Do?
Blockchain technology that most people are familiar with with Bitcoin is actually more than just a currency. For example, the basic logic that Bitcoin is based on is: Tom and Julia want to make a deal. However, they want to make this exchange in a world where there are no states, no guarantors, so nobody pays any taxes to anyone. So how do you ensure the reliability of this shopping? How do you prevent people from defrauding each other? Bitcoin emerges as the answer to these questions. It enables many users to witness the exchange between Tom and Julia and encrypt this transaction they witnessed.
The more users encrypt this exchange, the more witnesses it becomes, and the data can never be shredded again because it has been encrypted over and over. In the end, it irrevocably takes its place in the blockchain network. Users are rewarded with bitcoins for witnessing this process (i.e. for encrypting that transaction over and over again). This is how Bitcoin is mined and earned. This is the basic logic that blockchain is based on. It ensures that data is stored anonymously and is encrypted in an indelible and indestructible manner and can be viewed transparently by everyone.
Therefore, many countries such as Canada, England, China and Brazil are now transitioning to blockchain technology, which allows data to be stored transparently and decentralized without being destroyed or changed. It is discussed that countries should move e-government-like systems to blockchain. Blockchain-based initiatives are emerging that protect the copyrights of artworks.
So what does it mean to be decentralized?
Decentralization is not that all this data is located on one or two servers; It means that millions of users take part in their computers, just like torrent logic. Even when a user leaves the system, the data on it is immediately taken from another computer and the data is never lost, as if a virus infiltrates an individual’s computer, the system can never destroy the data because the system throws a foreign algorithm and no algorithm can break the data encrypted with 256 bits over and over.
In summary, decentralization helps to create a transparent, secure and free digital world where everyone can remain anonymous.
What Is Decentralized Social Media?
We can start to explain Bitclout. A decentralized social network means a decentralized social network built with a blockchain, a social network where people can freely share their thoughts anonymously, where they are never punished or arrested for what they say, for staying anonymous, and where freedom of thought is endless.
Recently, an article titled Social Media as a Transnational Problem by Serdar Kuzuloğlu was published in the Newspaper Oxygen. The basic idea of the article was this. Although social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, which are managed from a single center, are sensitive to issues such as freedom of thought and expression and defend human rights, they have now reached the power to silence even the presidents of their own countries and to block their accounts. This may be happening to managers who make separatist rhetoric today. But which boards are managing this blocking decision? Are these boards democratically elected? What are their competencies? These are never asked, and frankly, the future of world media is left in the hands of a few companies. Here, the decentralized social network emerges as a salvation that will eliminate the monopoly of these companies and create its own funding with the economic value created by businesses like Bitclout.
However, as you know, for the operation of a blockchain-based system, each input written is encrypted by other users, and in order to motivate people to use this encryption, earning cryptocurrencies or similar incentives are required. Bitclout comes to solve all these problems, promising its own economic value and anonymous use. Let’s come to the main question, which is our purpose of creating the content!
What Is Bitclout?
Bitclout is a blockchain-based decentralized social network experiment. Every transaction you make on this network is registered to the blockchain and since it is encrypted in a distributed structure and accessed with private connections, it is impossible to legally track the person who produces the content. In other words, people are prevented from being labeled by big companies and governments.
However, since every transaction made on this network, such as following someone, tweeting, editing a profile, is blockchain-based, it consumes a very small amount of energy. This requires money, even small amounts that are difficult to calculate. Even if it is 1 cent, it is impossible to make transactions on this network without us.
Just as Bitcoin is earned to motivate people to witness (encrypt the transaction) in the early examples of blockchain, because it is a distributed structure, Bitclout creates its own experimental economic system and adds value to the accounts. This value increases or decreases as you invest in a profile. For example, you increase the value of those accounts by purchasing the token of a creator you love or the coin of a person you think is an opinion leader.
Thus, content producers are directly valued through their own content. In its current form, it is possible for a group to deliberately raise the value of a profile so that people take it from the top, then withdraw their support from that profile and achieve great profits. This system causes great manipulation. However, it is possible to think that these problems will disappear with the regulations to be implemented in the future and the increase in the number of users.
Bitclout claims to be the world’s first decentralized social network.
The exciting thing is that, besides being the world’s first decentralized social media network, bitclout also has the ability to create an ecosystem for the establishment of sites where you can access and shop with your Bitclout account, design advertising networks, and produce video services. It is a fact that Jack Dorsey has been working on a decentralized Twitter for a long time. Or, we thought that similar things could be done with Holochain, which aims to establish a distributed internet hosted on people, but we did not unexpectedly expect this technology to be available to people so soon and in such a comprehensive way.
Who is Behind Bitclout?
As we mentioned at the beginning, it is impossible to make a transaction without a balance, even if it is small. Sending Bitcoin into such a system worries people. You wonder if this business will turn into a fraud story. However, among the investors of the founding team Diamondhands, which did not disclose themselves and remained anonymous, institutions and individuals such as Sequoia Capital, Anderssen Horowitz, Chamath Palihabitiya who previously worked as a manager at Facebook, Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of Reddit; Social Capital, Coinbase Ventrures, Winklewoss Capital and.
Bitclout, which is currently listed on Blockchain and AscendX exchanges, is currently trading in the $ 100 band, although it has experienced a normal imbalance with its entry into the stock market. However, Bitclout, which we think has around 4 thousand active users, can experience a huge economic growth even with the arrival of a single opinion leader. So how do you subscribe to this social media?
How Can I Be A Member Of Bitclout?
You access bitclout.com directly from your browser’s address line or through Google search results. The reason I wrote this is that sometimes when I try to directly access bitclout.com it is impossible. You have to access it either from the page designed for search results or over a connection that can be called encrypted. The interesting thing is that you do not set a password to become a member.
You can enter your Bitclout account with secret words created specifically for you.
When registering, you are given a sentence consisting of hidden words like in the image above. You take it and hide it somewhere. However, it is possible to enter your account with those words. So do not lose your encrypted link and sentence!
Although exciting, of course, the system also poses serious ethical issues!
Bitclout And Ethical Issues
What about pornographic content, shares that violate copyrights, shared in a decentralized media where no one can be followed legally? People have even witnessed deaths on platforms like Twitch that are operating legally. These platforms are in serious trouble with content like this. How will this be blocked on Bitclout? Will it be just a web of pornographic content?
How will this be dealt with when a group of investors deliberately raise the value of a profile and encourage people to invest and then cheat people who buy from the top?
For this, Bitclout has developed a system similar to the editing of content by its own community, as in Wikipedia. I think there is a system that divides the disturbing content into three levels and removes the content that reaches the third level that the majority of them is uncomfortable with, with editorial approval. Even if the accounts are closed with this method, access to the clouts in it is of course not lost. Apart from that, lawsuits have already started to be filed in Canada due to accounts opened using the photos of some famous names.
I personally don’t think Bitclout’s growth can be stopped. Yes, it is open to manipulation, the experimental economic system is a big problem, but it is worth seeing. When I entered, the token of Elon Musk’s profile was 75 thousand dollars, which Elon Musk has not even entered the system yet. Even the economic income created through the name of someone who is not included in the system brings many ethical violations on its own, but I don’t know.
The founding team, Diaomondhands, of course does not find these logical. He says that many multinational global companies such as Twitter, Instagram and Faceook earn billions of dollars from our data, and that they do not share this with content producers, that is, with the people they owe their existence, Bitclout will be the only structure that glorifies the content producers.
Bitclout has an economic system that is experimental and currently open to manipulation.
It is possible to say that in the future, like Patreon, some artists will give concerts unique to people who invest in themselves, and fans will have early access to some events or works.
As you may have noticed, I am not an investor. Birthofideas is not a blog with a lot of similar articles. It is an area where we try to include interesting positive content. But I decided to include Bitclout because it attracted my attention technologically. I do not give any investment advice or anything. Be sober. Do not invest in the system that you read here and cannot even withdraw your money yet. Check it out, though.
Note 2
And if they make a content management system such as wordpress, it will not beat the taste. There was a project called Humm on the Holochain, but its development has not been completed yet.