TwitterSpace Technical Director: How to Build a Web3 Social Media Network?

Original Title: "The 'Soulful Thoughts' of the Technical Director of TwitterSpace: How to Achieve the Vision of Web3 Social Media Networks?"

Written by: Mada AFLAK, Technical Director of TwitterSpaces Android

Compiled by: Baize Research Institute

In the good old days, when camcorders were still popular and children played with electronic pets, Web1 only allowed users to read information found on the Internet. However, the advent of Web2, accompanied by new technologies such as smartphones, provided users with the opportunity to read and write: anyone with a social media platform can now gain influence and have followers.

Over the years, social media companies have become very powerful. They control user information, monopolize public opinion, and dominate and decide the news. While social media networks have indeed paved the way for democracy (users can openly discuss and share their views), the drawbacks of these platforms are still worth pondering.

Social media platforms have existed for over 15 years, and during this time, the way they are used has changed dramatically. In this article, I aim to critique and reimagine the core authentication system of social media networks, enabling users to self-regulate the platform. I will demonstrate this through an imagined voting system designed to empower freedom of speech and diverse opinions, thereby forming an ecosystem akin to a digital democratic society.

Decentralized Digital Identity: Internet-Citizen-ID

Social Graph of Social Media Networks

Fake accounts in social media networks are a significant issue: users can manipulate social media by creating thousands of bots and posting fake news. Currently, social media companies invest billions of dollars to combat misinformation, eliminate scams, and remove automated manipulation bots from their platforms. The result? It has now evolved into an endless war between hackers and security engineers.

In my view, the only sustainable long-term solution is to identify each user as a legitimate user: confirming that everyone has a verified user account. For example, a person may have multiple "fake accounts" or browse the internet anonymously, but that user can only have one verified account associated with their identity.

There is no simple solution to human verification; it depends on the margin of error we can accept. That is to say, the solution to this problem could fundamentally transform today's social media networks into a healthy, sustainable ecosystem. This highly praised ecosystem would represent a new digital society, allowing users from around the world to trust, identify, and vote on a shared platform.

It is important to emphasize that the result of this approach will not be the storage of users' identities, but rather the verification of everyone through a verified account.

Represented by Universal Digital Identity on the Internet

Bitcoin has proven the demand for decentralized digital currency on a universal network, paving the way for decentralized digital identity for humanity.

However, a person's identity is crucial for their sense of security and belonging, making it one of their most important assets. For this reason, digital identity should not be held by companies, governments, or any other major entities, but rather issued as certificates and stored on the blockchain (a distributed ledger system that is nearly impossible to tamper with). For simplicity, let’s call this certificate Internet-Citizen-ID, which can be translated as "Internet Citizen Identity."

Once social media networks verify identities, each user will receive an Internet-Citizen-ID that connects to an encrypted wallet (the safest place to store and redeem digital assets). Suppose this ID can serve as a universal means of authentication; it would not only confirm that users are who they say they are but also create interoperability across internet platforms.

The Technology Behind Internet-Citizen-ID: Non-Tradable-Token (NTT)

You may have heard of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), which are proof of ownership stored in a decentralized database. These tradable tokens come in the form of real-world asset themes, including art, music, in-game items, etc. The principles of this technology can also be applied to Internet-Citizen-ID, such as Non-Tradable-Token (NTT), which Ethereum founder Vitalik likes to refer to as "soul-bound NFTs."

NTT will follow specific standards, similar to NFT standards, but without the ability to be transferred. In fact, NTT has no monetary value but will be personally delivered to you as proof of ownership. NTT can represent inherent personal property, such as university diplomas, online training certificates, government-issued IDs, etc.

Currently, this token standard has been written into Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-4671. (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4671)

Decentralized Credential Wallet: Storing NTT

In daily life, we are accustomed to carrying identification such as driver's licenses, passports, school diplomas, and employee badges. Throughout the day, we present these credentials to colleagues, organizations, and companies.

Internet-Citizen-ID reflects such scenarios in the digital world, allowing users to carry identification on personal devices. By ensuring privacy, reliable sources, and trustworthy interactions through decentralized identity, users gain instant access to identity information, allowing them to decide how to store, share, and access their personal information.

To ensure this functionality, customers first need to install an encrypted wallet application on their phones, which contains an Internet-Citizen-ID and other user credentials minted as NTT.

Conceptually, such an encrypted wallet is similar to a password manager, but it manages the private keys used by users in the decentralized identity system. For example, when joining a new company, recruiters typically contact former employers listed on the employee's resume. Here, candidates can log in using their former employer's NTT instead of undergoing traditional background checks, proving to recruiters that they once worked for that company.

Misinformation and Disinformation

Trusting Information on Social Media Networks

A few years ago, audiences could only watch news from centralized, established news media organizations. Today, with the rise of Web2, online social media has become an important channel for news dissemination, as "people rely on social media for news" (Forbes, 2019). Meanwhile, mainstream media "has been affected by a decline in public trust" (NET Foundation, 2018).

The disruption of standardized channels for news distribution is one of the greatest democratic breakthroughs in history: it provides ordinary people with a shared space to participate and express their opinions, not just on news but through diverse events.

However, social media networks have also made it easier to spread misinformation and disinformation.

Through a term known as Deepfakes, the integrity of information on social media networks has faced significant challenges. With Deepfakes, anyone can replace a person's face with another's image. A famous example in this regard includes comedian Jordan Peele impersonating former U.S. President Barack Obama and manipulating the audience (YouTube, 2018).

One reason social media networks find it so difficult to identify Deepfakes and other sources of misinformation is that the standards for identifying, tracking, and responding to mass manipulation of content are inconsistent.

While it is undeniable that social media networks have positive roles, we must also confront the darker side: it is much easier to artificially amplify conspiracy theories and false claims about topics; accounts daring to highlight racism are rampant; election results and wars have been spammed to the point of viral recognition.

Who Should Manage Social Media Platforms?

Content moderation can be said to be the biggest challenge for social media networks. Indeed, the platform's standard is that users can express their beliefs freely, but not at the cost of mass manipulation, which makes such content difficult to identify:

• Who is knowledgeable enough and has enough sense of justice to determine the truth of the news?
• Are we prohibiting democracy by censoring users' freedom of speech?

In an ideal world, the design of social media networks should allow users to self-regulate the content that constitutes the platform.

A Voting System for an Open, Transparent Platform

How NTT Helps Moderate Content?

In a networked world that encourages freedom of opinion, we should be able to vote for or against content, but this alone is not enough to regulate user content.

Typically, we see bots heavily involved in content and hashtags, artificially amplifying topics and trends to manipulate public opinion. We need a more complex system to create a trustworthy, self-regulating social media network, and decentralized credential wallets will play a key role in this.

In a world containing Internet-Citizen-ID, using a voting system, each person will only receive one vote on a post. This will make it more difficult to manipulate social media algorithms, and public opinion will be easier to track and establish.

In addition to this voting system, decentralized credential wallets can also allow legitimate users to vote using their NTT credentials: software engineers, health doctors, news article journalists, data scientists, and so on. The voting results will be divided into public opinion and professional opinion.

Let’s consider a post opposing vaccine efficacy. Users will see a clear divide between the public and professionals, with 40% of the public in support and 80% of doctors against. With clear professional endorsement, these metrics will be as influential as the post's information itself, if not more so.

Polls: Public Opinion for the Benefit of the Democratic Ecosystem

Historically, we know that it is not uncommon for the U.S. government to provide false information and manipulate society to better serve its interests. Having tools to understand the true public opinion is crucial for the populace, but they did not exist in 2022.

Since social media platforms still cannot generate reliable metrics, opinion algorithms are ambiguous and unreliable. Moreover, users are categorized based on their reading and clicking habits, so algorithms provide recommendations based on their interests. As a result, a capricious isolated culture has emerged, leading users to be unwilling to accept new viewpoints.

In the future, voting tools could exist within social media networks through the method of "voting." Unfortunately, in an ecosystem where users are either bots or have multiple accounts, such voting results are uncertain.

By verifying the identities of legitimate users on the platform, we can conduct polls around hot topics and accurately understand the public opinion versus professional opinion.

These results can serve a range of purposes, including market research, reliable data, general statistics, and can also spark discussions among users.

Creator Voting: Economic Incentives for Users

In social media networks, there are two types of users: passive users and active users. Passive users are the readers on the platform; active users are those who create content, often referred to as "creators." Creators represent a minority of the total users on social media networks but are a key component of the platform's success.

Without creators and without incentive measures that allow creators to earn long-term benefits, passive users connected to the platform can only consume ads instead of reading engaging content.

Strategically, the platform can distribute token rewards (a fixed total amount of digital currency issued by the company itself) monthly to users who connect their personal identity Internet-Citizen-ID to the platform. For simplicity, let’s call this digital currency Agora Coins. Agora Coins can only be used and valued on the platform where they are issued, allowing users to promote themselves internally to increase visibility.

To further explain, users can apply for "income" on the platform using their Internet-Citizen-ID stored in an encrypted wallet. For example, let each legitimate user receive 100 Agora Coins per month, allowing them to send 20 Agora Coins to their favorite economist, 60 to their favorite comedian, and the remaining 20 to an entrepreneurial friend. This "user voting" based reward system will grant visibility and attention to individuals on the platform.

Unlike likes/follows/shares, Agora Coins will support specific features such as single identity verification and quantity limits, making them essentially similar to weighted votes.

By distributing tokens monthly to verified users, we witness the birth of a digital economy that automatically rewards creators who invest in the platform. By establishing an ecosystem akin to digital democracy (where users can choose which creators gain visibility), social media networks are endowed with fairer business strategies.

Voting Archived Content

We often forget that we are the first generation with access to the internet and know very little about how internet archiving works and why it is so important. For future generations, we have the opportunity to provide them with a historical backlog of "internet archives": enabling them to track conversations at any specific time in history.

Unfortunately, if website creators stop paying server fees, their content disappears. To avoid losing valuable content, few organizations aim to archive the "internet." While these organizations have good intentions, the "internet archives" are currently at a low level due to being disorganized and untagged. If past content could be carefully arranged for online storage and enriched with metadata, users would be able to find any content in its original format at any time.

Using blockchain technology or any other distributed system that allows data storage, we can solve the problem of archiving the internet (without relying on central authorities). However, given the current "internet archive" system's expense, chaos, and difficulty in management, social media networks could use a hybrid system: only important content (including identity credentials, certifications, user votes, and internet archives) would be minted onto the blockchain; then, all other user content would be stored in a centralized database.

To succeed, a necessary voting system should be established to allow users to reach a consensus. This consensus will determine whether a post is worth storing on the blockchain, and thus, all relevant internet blockchains must meet the new standards for internet archiving.

Conclusion

“If we weigh all the ants in the world, their weight will be as heavy as all of humanity.” (E. O'Wilson and B. Hoelldobler, 1994).

Here, the accuracy of this statement is irrelevant, as it illustrates the impact of collective intelligence. While ants may lack emotional intelligence, they have mastered the art of cooperation and coordination without conflict. Overall, their wisdom makes them one of the dominant species on Earth!

The same concept can be applied to humans: because we can communicate with each other, we have achieved incredible feats. Unlike other species, our evolution has become complicated over time: we not only learn from the animal world around us but also from our ancestors, who disseminated extensive knowledge through books and encyclopedias.

In an era where the future of the Earth is so uncertain, with wars, mass migrations, ecological disasters, and global warming threatening our species, we need a tool to address these issues and enhance human collective intelligence more than ever.

By providing users with a self-regulating decentralized social media network, a transformative ecosystem could become a solution to reduce centralization, censorship, manipulation, and misinformation. This would not only help establish a democratic platform but also enhance transparency, trust, and governance.

History can be written not only by corporate conglomerates but also by the masses, and thus, Internet-Citizen-ID and social media voting tools will establish a universal digital society. The result will give the public the opportunity to express opinions on the internet in influential, impactful, and historic ways, forever changing the online world.