A decentralized social network based on people not platforms
All social networks are pretty much built upon:
- People (publishing various forms of content which others can follow and respond to)
- Servers (to store the data)
- Advertising
Advancements in technology (current and prospective) will allow for the decentralization of both servers and advertising thus allowing the disintermediation of all social media platforms. New models of advertising such as Brave are on the horizon which will create better incentive models for all participants involved. The Lightning Network will enable anyone running a node to create a "decentralized identity" and thus sign/publish messages from that identity.
The ability to to create a website using your own server (.crypto? .onion?) can provide a large bulk of the burden on storing data. Users can publish their own content on their website in various forms i.e. short statements or "dimes" blog-like pieces or "ounces" or long-form papers "pounds." ...of course users can upload all forms of content as well (picutes, short videos, long videos, audio, etc).
The tricky part is creating a protocol for people to interact with eachother by referencing and replying to eachother's content, and incentivising the public storage of this data. Decentralized Identity/signed messages will provide the first part of the equation (referencing) but what is needed is a method of querying the data on these servers in order to find others content. Given the ability to find the content of other specific decentralized identities data on this network of servers, one will be able to reference others content, reply to it, and publish that to the network.