- SOCIETY2 is an ecosystem that enables the construction of social networks based on IOTA’s Distributed Ledger Technology.
- The ecosystem will give users control over their data, privacy, advertising and identity on the social networks.
After a number of scandals, traditional social networks have lost the trust of many users. At the same time, these platforms have become an essential part of people’s daily lives. In order to overcome this discrepancy, the SOCIETY2 team has proposed an ecosystem that returns control of data, privacy and identity to users by using the technology of IOTA.
Built on IOTA’s Distributed Ledger technology, SOCIETY2 enables the construction of decentralized social networks (DeSM). After the introduction of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) that has revolutionized the Ethereum ecosystem, SOCIETY2 seeks to take the next step “beyond finance”: information. Its goal is simple: to allow users of social networks regain their choice and to give back control to users over the content and information they share on the internet. Ben Royce, Head of Development at SOCIETY2, has raised the following question:
Why are we handing the details of our personal lives over to corporations to mine and profit off us? Why don’t we control that, why don’t we profit off that.
In this way, SOCIETY2 was conceived as an alternative to traditional social media, which centralizes the information of its users and deprives them of the power of control. The SOCIETY2 ecosystem, on the other hand, offers its users freedom, choice and control.
Using IOTA’s Distributed Ledger Technology, user data is stored securely and reliably. Furthermore, the information will be “portable”. This means that a user who is not satisfied with a social network created on SOCIETY2 can easily migrate to another. This will be possible by using the Decentralized Identity (DID) of IOTA. The DID is created only once and allows users or content creators to share some or all of their data with other applications or social networks on SOCIETY2:
(…) this should encourage a healthy marketplace of platforms ready to compete for our content or attention.
Therefore, users will be able to transparently and explicitly choose the level of privacy they want. According to the head of development of SOCIETY2, everything marked as private will be stored cryptographically. In addition, users will be able to choose whether they want to see advertisements, and they will be rewarded when they do, Royce said:
Micropayments allow profit sharing, fair revenue splits.
How SOCIETY2 based on IOTA works
It is important to note that with SOCIETY2 users will also be able to create and manage their own social networks. SOCIETY2 enables this through the IOTA Streams framework.
IOTA Streams is a framework for cryptographic applications and SOCIETY2 is working on extending this functionality to serve as a tool chest of standard social media functions, with those extensions collectively packaged as a software framework for platforms (think apps, forums, sites and more) to use in publishing social media content.
A library of methods, properties, events, etc., common across all social media examples, can be abstracted out, for use by anyone. All sorts of sites and apps can be quickly instantiated.
Via his Twitter account, Royce gave a precise summary about SOCIETY2:
In a nutshell: extend #IOTA Streams to allow easy creation, moderation, and contribution to a constellation of #DeSM sites/ apps… as long as you host a node, you are in the social media business. 67-100% of the logic #opensource , already done for you…
Further information on the project is not yet known. The first blog post on the official website will follow in the upcoming days.