Do You OWN Your Account or Are You Just Leasing It?

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Do You OWN Your Account or Are You Just Leasing It?

OWN your account.gif

A lot of people never even thought about this, most never will until they are banned and everything they build on social networks is gone forever.

YOU DON'T OWN YOUR ACCOUNT

On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and any other web 2.0 social network account that you use is just leased to you by the company that owns the platform. And they can take it away whenever they want. You can send a complaint, you can beg for it, you can campaign to your followers to make noise and ask the platform to lease it back to you (if you have your followers on some other social network, or if not all of them take your lease at the same time). But in the end, you are at the mercy of your "landlords".

And they can have mercy on you and let you stay for a while more or they can find all kinds of smart or stupid reasons to just say "our platform our rules and you broke some", or maybe even never respond to you.

Most creators when they start to get bigger start thinking about it, and often i heard "don't put all your eggs in one basket". If they are on youtube they try to get their audience to follow them on Instagram, Twitter... But most know that they don't own accounts there either.

One thing that was here from the beginning of the internet and was used forever was email and mailing lists. Maybe i was just not noticing it few years ago, but lately, i see they are making a comeback. Creators see it as the last straw for them to stay connected with their fan base if de-platformed or shadowbanned. But i bet i am not the only one whose inbox looks like this.

email triggered.jpg

Yes, some people were triggered few days ago when i shared this screen capture :D Sorry.

So mailing list sometimes does not work :D

Latest events got more people thinking about censorship and what could happen with their accounts. More people started thinking about their voice on the web.

Hive is still a small community of communities. And there are a lot of front ends that will show your content. And most will say that they will not censor you. But the reality is, they are run by people, and people can make a decision that they don't like something connected with their name.

But blockchain does not care. It does not care if you are left, right, white, black, yellow, green, gay, straight, trans, or alien. And Your Account, Your Followers and your posts are on the blockchain. Some front ends may decide that they don't like you, even if all decide that they don't like you, as long as you own your keys, you own your account.

@tarazkp wrote a good post on the topic of your accounts and communities Mind your own business on Hive that got me thinking about all of this.

Sure Hive is not perfect, it has it's flaws and problems. But i am not aware of any other project that has(as theycallmedan said):

  • No ico
  • No premine/founders reward
  • No founder
  • Born via a crypto war for #freespeech
  • 100% community owned
  • Largest holder has 3% of supply & is anon
  • 4 years + running without content/account loss
  • Scaled for the masses

In the future it can only progress and be better.



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19 comments
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Nice write-up! Let's hope people start to wake up and see things as they are and not continue to be blind and fall victims of herd mentality.

Latest events got more people thinking about censorship and what could happen with their accounts. More people started thinking about their voice on the web.

I've been thinking of this since a few months now, have created a dedicated account on Hive and it's finally time to do the work, move my content to Hive, before it's too late.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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most of us don't think about loosing accounts because we think there is no reason for some of those networks banning us. but as more you look you can see that accounts are despairing every day.

I do think someone will make it really easy to make your own frontend page (blog, store...) with all the data that you stored on the blockchain. Travelfeed started something with travel blogs, and i think it is just the beggining.

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What many don't realize is how important contacts are. I've been through a similar situation before. There was a social media platform called Tsu, that went dark one night about 4 years ago. I had a lot of friends there, who I lost contact with in a split second. Lucky us, a few of us were friends on Fb, so we could connect and keep in touch, keep ourselves up to date till we find a home. And we did find a home on Hive.

Now imagine Hive going dark all of a sudden and losing these people you're in contact day by day, not to mention the content we put in the blockchain over the years. We don't want that and we're safe here.

Others will follow, slowly but they will.

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I didn’t know the largest stake had only 3% of supply !
One thing missing is the decentralisation from hosting perspective, hope it can be reached soon.

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i thought that it is around 5% but i did try to find out for a long time. I seen theycallmedan saying that is 3%. It could be few % more because some of those bigger accounts are anonymous, so they could be owned by the same person.

if the app build by 3speak will work with home PC that want to share some storage space and even earn something (or at least not be negative) i think it could be a good way of storing video and photos.

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Sorry I was not challenging the 3% or 5%. That’s still positively low :)

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i know. i was just confirming that i am not 100% sure about the number :D

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People are only starting to wake up to the fact now that they are actually very vulnerable online. They always think it won't happen to them but all it takes is one wrong post or complaint and its all gone in a second. Years of work at the mercy of a kid in a control room.....

Hive onboarding has ramped up this week and it's easy to see why. If more people knew what was on offer here they would be joining too so its a marketing race at the moment to capture their attention.

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Years of work at the mercy of a kid in a control room

and you are lucky if you get the kid in a control room, there is a chance to only get a automated computer response.

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You merely own your account's name on mainstream social media. Hive is definitely a way better alternative for many out there, but the problem is people don't know about us... Leo's microblogging app will make huge splashes once it is out. I can't wait for its launch.

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yes people like short content as it is easier for most, we could also argue that it is more fun, but less informative :D

hope it will be out soon, i am really interested to see how it will work.

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I wouldn't say less informative. It depends a lot on how you write that short content and send out the core info.

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I think that more and more people are going to come to this realization in the coming years and look for real alternatives, not more BS.

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the main problem is that most don't see it until it happens to them, but that is kinda true for everything.

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Yes. It seems to be the way of the world. We don't learn from what happens to others, good or bad.

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Largest holder has 3% of supply & is anon

I noticed how you said that you weren't 100% accurate on that, but that's totally fine. 3%, 5%. Those are actually great numbers. I thought it was more than that.. But that refers to the total supply and not the circulating, right?

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now you got me of guard :D i did not look at the distribution plan for a while. it should not be the total distribution because hive does not have a total distribution. Inflation is going down (i think every 6 months) and in the end it will i think be 1% forever. Because you have to have inflation or transaction fees. and you have to have them because in 20-40 years you have to have a model to pay witnesses. and no inflation and no transaction fees, witnesses work for free :D

The number 3% is from theycallmedan posts, and it should be current distribution.

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