MeWe chairman and CEO Jeffrey Edell just lately penned an op-ed detailing how he believes the state of affairs between the US authorities and China’s TikTok may very well be prevented by way of the implementation of blockchain applied sciences.
Edell’s within the distinctive place of helming a social media firm with, reportedly, greater than 20 million customers that’s made the leap from conventional web2 to the blockchain.
The TikTok state of affairs
A slew of latest experiences point out that the U.S. is at present weighing an outright ban on China’s TikTok social media platform. There are allegations that ByteDance, the platform’s proprietor, has turned over delicate person information to the Chinese language authorities with potential unfavourable implications for U.S. safety.
In an op-ed penned for Rolling Stone, Edell wrote about how the TikTok state of affairs is, at its crux, a matter of person privateness that might have been averted by way of decentralization:
“Whereas the issues surrounding TikTok are legitimate, I imagine the main target mustn’t solely be on one app or one nation. As a substitute, corporations ought to work towards creating and setting strict pointers for dealing with private information, digital id and customers’ privateness, no matter their origin.”
Edell added that “a technique to make sure that private information is safe and guarded is thru using Internet 3-based, blockchain expertise.”
Transitioning to blockchain
As Cointelegraph reported, MeWe made the transition from web2 to the Frequency blockchain community, a Polkadot parachain, in April of 2023.
Basically, the argument for blockchain-based person privateness hinges on who, precisely, has entry to person information. On conventional social media platforms, akin to X.com, person information is held and accessed by way of a centralized management methodology whereby the corporate itself retains possession of all information.
In TikTok’s case, this ostensibly implies that ByteDance, and by authorized extension, the federal government of China, owns all the platform’s person information — together with greater than 150 million U.S.-based customers.
By inserting information on the blockchain and implementing particular privateness controls, a social media community can provide customers management over their information with out compromising platform performance.
Associated: Worldcoin launches its personal ‘human-centric’ blockchain community
Whereas MeWe’s person base doesn’t fairly stack as much as TikTok’s, the corporate’s transition to blockchain exhibits that it’s attainable.
To that finish, Edell shared six finest practices for different corporations contemplating the change in his Rolling Stone article, these included: understanding the expertise, beginning small, selecting the platform that’s proper on your group, staying updated with regulatory compliance modifications, collaborating with stakeholders, and guaranteeing staff are educated and skilled on blockchain.
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