Note

What They Do

• 本文將去中心化社交媒體按照架構分為三種：聯邦、點對點、基於區塊鏈，分析各自的功能和治理模式。最後還討論了去中心化社交媒體的驅動因素和問題。

  • Social media platforms allow users to create digital identities, interact with other users, post and discover content. On mainstream social media platforms, aspects of the platform are centralised under the control of one umbrella. Decentralised social media are designed around the distribution of one or more aspects required to make social media function. Architecturally, these are data storage, content distribution, discovery, identity mechanisms and networking topology. Socially, these are their governance and revenue models. This article identifies and discusses three general types of decentralised social media grouped by architecture: federated, peer-to-peer, blockchain-based. Examples of each are discussed, along with a general description of their functioning and governance. Finally, the entry provides a general discussion of the drivers and issues around decentralised social media.

Summary of Previous Literature

• What is social media?
  • 社交媒體的核心功能是社交圖譜，它允許用戶創建個人資料，並且與其它用戶建立聯繫和互動。在社交媒體中的核心互動是發佈內容和接受反饋，分享的對象可以是面向所有人、特定群體或者是關注者列表，反饋形式有關注、評論、轉發和點贊等。

    • The core feature of social media is the social graph, which allows users to create profiles; establish connections to other users and interact with them; publish content; and receive feedback on this content (boyd & Ellison, 2007).

• What are open standards?
  • 為了將社交網絡中的關鍵技術去中心化，工程師們試圖通過創建開放標準來實現，包括身份供應（DNS、XDI、OpenID）；身份驗證（OAuth）；機器可讀的網頁元數據（RDF, XML, Microformats, Open Graph）；內容傳輸（RSS, ATOM, XMPP, ActivityPub）。這些努力的結果好壞參半，其中部分原因是因為不同標準之間的競爭和內鬥。另外，開放標準僅僅從技術上解決問題，沒有考慮到經濟、政治和社會的面向。

    • Consequently, the web engineering community has tried to decentralise key aspects of the social web through the creation of open standards, including identity provisioning (DNS, XDI, OpenID); authentication(OAuth); machine-readable web page metadata (RDF, XML, Microformats, Open Graph); and content transportation (RSS, ATOM, XMPP, ActivityPub). These efforts have had mixed results, partly because of internecine strife between different standards competing to solve similar issues (Halpin, 2018). Moreover, standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have approached decentralisation technically and without considering economic, political and social issues.

  • 矛盾的是，開放標準反而鞏固了像 Facebook 和 Google 這樣的主流中心式平台的市場主導地位。例如，雖然元數據標準 RDF 沒有被廣泛採用，但它啓發了 Facebook 創建 Open Graph 協議。通過添加 Facebook 的 Like 按鈕，網頁可以被社交媒體平台以標準化的方式讀取，並提供豐富的鏈接預覽等功能，使 Facebook 有能力跟蹤用戶。同樣，OAuth 的開發是為了使用另一個網站的數據安全地識別一個網站的用戶。雖然這在理論上實現了身份機制的分散化，但在實踐中，它通過“使用 Facebook 帳號登錄”和“使用 Google 帳號登錄”按鈕，幫助鞏固了 Facebook 和 Google 作為身份提供商的地位（Halpin，2018）。

    • While some standards have not been widely adopted, others have paradoxically helped cement the market dominance of mainstream, centralised platforms like Facebook and Google as they have co-authored and embraced key aspects of these standards.

  • 儘管如此，這些標準化過程中產生的開放協議也為去中心化的社交媒體奠定了技術基礎。後來的去中心化社交媒體項目都以某種方式使用了這些標準。

    • Nevertheless, the open protocols resulting from these standardisation processes also laid the technical foundations for decentralised social media.

Gap

• 圍繞「去中心化」討論中的術語使用經常有語意不明的問題，本文將提供從架構和文化上來描述去中心化社交媒體的途徑。

  • Decentralisation has been characterised by the fuzziness of the term’s usage and is thus in need of further characterisation and contextualisation (Bodó et al., 2021; Schneider, 2019; Troncoso et al., 2017). This section will provide avenues to characterise decentralisation in social media architecturally and culturally, and it introduces several examples of decentralised platforms, categorising them into the following: federated, peer-to-peer and blockchain-based.

What They Did

• What is decentralised social media?
  • 去中心化的社交媒體一般可分為聯邦式、點對點（P2P）和基於區塊鏈的。這些平台都是圍繞以下一個或多個方面的分布而設計的：數據存儲、內容分發與審核、發現、身份機制、治理、收入模式和網絡拓撲結構。去中心化的社交媒體存在不同的驅動力，從歷史上對中心化權力結構的擔憂到當代對中心化平台的內容審核政策的對抗。

    • Decentralised social media can generally be categorised as federated, peer-to-peer(P2P) and blockchain-based. These platforms are designed around the distribution of one or more of the following: data storage, content distribution, discovery, identity mechanisms, governance and moderation, revenue models and network topology. Different drivers exist for decentralised social media, ranging from historical concerns over centralised power structures to more contemporary concerns about centralised platforms’ content moderation policies.

• What is federated social media?
  • 聯邦系統通過開放網絡標準實現不同實例之間的互動，不同的聯邦平台也可以在不同程度上有互動，用戶將之稱為聯邦宇宙。沒有一個聯邦項目遵循盈利模式，大多依靠捐贈和志願勞動。用戶數據存儲在所在實例的服務器上。由於沒有所有人都在的大廣場，即針對所有消息和用戶的空間，因此內容發現取決於實例已建立的連接，而這又取決於用戶到用戶的連接。因此，一個人能看到什麼也取決於他在哪個實例上，這就產生了與盡可能多的實例建立聯繫的壓力。而且，如果一個實例消失了，那麼該實例上所有用戶的數據也隨之消失。Mastodon 和 Hubzilla 等一些項目允許用戶從一個實例遷移到另一個實例。在安全和隱私方面，用戶依賴於每個實例背後的管理團隊，就像中心化社交媒體的情況一樣。

    • Federated systems all rely on open web standards and are open source, and decentralise through online federation. Hosting providers(‘instances’) interoperate with other instances, allowing interaction between different instances.

• What is peer-to-peer (P2P) social media?
  • 以 Secure Scuttlebutt 為例，SSB 基於 gossip protocol，用戶註冊時會收到一個身份和相對應的加密密鑰，密鑰和設備綁定在一起，用戶和其它用戶的設備建立聯繫，並在網絡中接收和轉發數據給他們直接認識的用戶。然而一個人的數據只有在他們被關注的時候才會傳播到網絡中，這意味著所有用戶都有可能成為通過網絡傳播數據所需的基礎設施的一部分，用戶集體負責數據存儲、內容發現和身份建立。雖然在理論上，網絡可以完全基於用戶與用戶之間的直接互動，但在實踐中，它在很大程度上依賴於所謂的 pub，其中服務器也是對等網絡的一部分，並且始終在線，從而提供更好的速度、一致性和可靠性。SSB 的基礎機制是複製的僅有附錄的日誌，這意味著刪除信息是不可能的，因為所有的變化必須通過網絡傳播。諸如關注某人、訂閱某個主題或改變顯示名稱等變化的歷史也是永久性的。SSB 的資金主要來自於贊助和資助，但在某些情況下也有風險投資。

    • SSB is based on the so-called gossip protocol, wherein users receive an identity and corresponding set of encryption keys which are tied to their device.

    • In the case of SSB, the use of codes of conduct and aesthetic signalling through imagery and language by developers, early adopters and advocates specifically aims to deter adoption by the extreme right (Bevensee, 2020, pp. 15-16). However, users are responsible for making their own decisions about blocking others. The act of one account blocking another is propagated through the network, which can indicate to others to also block the account (Kermarrec et al., 2020; Tarr et al., 2019). It is important to note that while such platforms bring greater transparency, their immutable nature means even truly objectionable content, such as child sexual abuse material, cannot be removed (Diehl, 2021).

• What is blockchain-based social media?
  • 在基於區塊鏈的平台上，加密貨幣被用於內容的貨幣化和網站治理，並且是這些平台的身份和收入模式的核心。基於區塊鏈的社交媒體項目，如 Minds 和 Steemit 都是由一個中心化組織負責內容發現、身份建立、尋址和認證等功能。基於區塊鏈的平台由於其寬松的服務條款和內容審核，已經成為主流話語中去中心化的同義詞。被禁止的內容範圍更窄，因為許多這些平台是對中心化平台的內容審核政策的回應。因此，內容被存儲在區塊鏈上或通過分布式存儲系統。

    • Notably, Web3, which is built on the Ethereum blockchain, seeks to build a new internet on blockchains, including social media, gaming and more (Roose, 2022). Examples of blockchain-based platforms include Minds (Ottman et al., 2018) and Steemit (Steem, 2017). However, Web3 has been deemed responsible for the ‘the hyperfinancialization of all human existence’ (Diehl, 2021).

• Issues of decentralised social media?
  • 右翼勢力的天堂。審查的悖論：戀童癖的內容無法被刪除。

    • Similarly, Minds has attracted a notable extreme right user base, while supporters of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have also promoted it (Popper, 2021; RajendraNicolucci & Zuckerman, 2021, p. 31; Europol, 2021)

  • 開放標準模型的悖論，旨在分散網絡的工作進一步促進其集中化。相同的流程和技術使得更大的去中心化社交媒體得以出現。

    • Abbate (2000, p. 179) states that ‘protocols are politics by other means’, meaning parties working on technical standards use those standards to further their agenda (see also DeNardis, 2009, p. 10).

    • However, the same processes and technologies also enabled larger decentralised social networks to emerge. As such, this work is critical but vulnerable to corporate capture. This can happen not only through “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” (Simcoe & Watson, 2019, p. 6) but also through the accumulation of a majority stake of a tokenised governance model, a form of Sybil attack which blockchains are uniquely vulnerable to. One such example of this is documented in the case of Steem (Rajendra-Nicolucci & Zuckerman, 2021, pp. 33-35).

  • 各類去中心化社交媒體大多都由西方科技公司所創立。相信每個社會問題都會有技術解決方案的信念出口到世界，尤其是加密貨幣被吹捧為使得較貧窮的國家發生革命性變化的心態被稱為「加密殖民主義」。

    • Finally, it is worth noting that such technologies are often built in the West, and exported elsewhere with ‘the belief that every social problem has a technological solution’, akin to a white saviour. Cryptocurrencies in particular have been touted as revolutionalising poorer countries, in a mindset dubbed crypto-colonialism, echoing history (Ottenhof, 2021).