Opinion by: Chris Jenkins, adviser to Pocket Community
Tim Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient of the World Extensive Net is lifeless. As a substitute of an open and accessible international data system, the online is managed by centralized international information conglomerates, which don’t simply prohibit free speech but in addition monetize your information as a value of entry. Web2 corporations have constructed walled gardens with huge data asymmetry between firms and customers.
Blockchain-based decentralized tech challenges the established order, providing a substitute for Web2’s closed-source infrastructure.
It permits builders and engineers to construct a censorship-resistant and accessible open-data net to champion the reason for free speech. Open-source expertise creates a paradigmatic shift in a good and inclusive web the place centralized net firms gained’t dictate the phrases.
A imaginative and prescient deferred
In 1989, Berners-Lee’s invention created a digital area for collaboration, sharing and studying from each other. The net’s first iteration was based mostly on openness, the place anybody might contribute, entry data, work collectively, and revel in the identical alternatives.
The web is now not free in 2025. Capital’s brute drive has emboldened centralized firms to train authoritarian management over information and knowledge flows.
Sadly, these firms have acquired their energy and sources from unaware customers who unknowingly contributed to their capital accumulation methods. Web2 firms surreptitiously acquire information from customers with out honest compensation and use that as a weapon to manage consumer conduct.
Firms harness consumer information to coach opaque algorithms and deploy data “discoverability” to form customers’ beliefs and feelings. This apply is seen primarily on centralized social media platforms resembling Fb, Instagram and X, with a number of scandals and pending litigations eroding consumer belief.
For instance, in June 2024, Meta, the mother or father firm of Fb and Instagram, acquired 11 complaints from European Union members. The complaints involved utilizing private information like posts and pictures to coach Meta’s AI fashions with out consent, violating EU privateness legal guidelines.
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The Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated how firms mine information to form political views and election outcomes. These firms additionally assemble pre-determined narratives and form market conduct by selling or subverting curated experiences, typically shaping public views on well being and financial information.
Underneath its Digital Markets Act, the European Fee has initiated a noncompliance investigation into Apple, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet’s practices. Meta has additionally incurred a $1.3 billion high-quality for failing to adjust to privateness rules.
On this atmosphere, “free speech” stays a far-fetched dream as a result of your entire tech stack is hostile to accessibility and openness. To appreciate Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient, apps should use a decentralized tech stack and be constructed from the bottom up on an open structure.
Make the web free (once more)
An app’s tech stack consists of its back and front ends, information storage and Content material Supply Community (CDN). Web2 platforms rely upon a centralized tech stack that places free speech in danger, whereas most blockchain-powered apps leverage a censorship-resistant decentralized tech stack with excessive uptime.
Some decentralized functions (DApps) construct their entrance finish on a decentralized interface. Most of their again finish, nonetheless, remains to be caught on centralized information infrastructure.
For instance, regardless of their censorship vulnerabilities and single failure factors, decentralized functions (DApps) typically use centralized cloud suppliers and information internet hosting platforms. A lot of these assault vectors make initiatives like Twister Money topic to the altering moods of state actors.
Shifting to open-source protocols for distributed information storage like InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin upholds the free speech philosophy on DApps. These protocols supply a censorship-resistant, tamper-proof storage facility that continues to be accessible with out arbitrary outages.
DApps additionally use centralized distant process name (RPC) suppliers to provide information from the back-end to the front-end interface, particularly throughout a number of networks. However any outage or assault, just like the one on X, can result in downtime, inaccuracies, information gaps and disconnected data flows. If it doesn’t appear to be a lot, bear in mind downtime or inaccuracies in decentralized finance can price billions.
Decentralized protocols keep away from these conditions by reworking information accessibility and switch channels with unbiased node operators. Information queries are distributed throughout the community, eliminating any single level of failure and offering uninterrupted information availability. Extra importantly, it safeguards free speech rights as a result of no single node can block or hinder information circulate, and the community stays accessible even when a number of nodes go offline.
CDNs, yet one more essential element for serving consumer requests, can turn out to be inaccessible on account of market stress or political affect. Opaque selections from closed-door conferences dictate information flows on CDNs with none certainty in data flows.
Begin with the fundamentals
Decentralized protocols take away the necessity for centralized decision-making by enabling apps to straight entry information with out intermediaries. These permissionless protocols join open-source information and repair suppliers with customers and functions, eradicating human interplay and related manufactured issues.
Blockchain-powered platforms lay the muse for a decentralized tech stack that promotes free speech and isn’t managed by centralized Web2 firms. These permissionless protocols construct an open-source world and return the web to Berners-Lee’s imaginative and prescient of a worldwide and accessible community.
Opinion by: Chris Jenkins, adviser to Pocket Community.
This text is for common data functions and isn’t supposed to be and shouldn’t be taken as authorized or funding recommendation. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed listed below are the creator’s alone and don’t essentially replicate or symbolize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.