Felecia Davis 
With Elon Musk’s introduced buy of Twitter for about $44 billion, the stranglehold of the world’s billionaires on the world’s media shops has tightened. Cases in level: Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post; Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg nonetheless exert a large quantity of affect on the businesses they based, and Michael Bloomberg controls the Bloomberg Media Group.
Is there any treatment for the relentless march of the billionaires towards world media domination?
The brief reply is sure, however to know how the proposed resolution works, it could assist to first take a step again to know the context by which this dialogue is happening.
Twitter was constructed to be an open, inclusive area at no cost speech for everybody around the globe. However, like the opposite companies and media corporations talked about above, it’s nonetheless a Web2-based centralized platform. It generates revenue by serving focused advertisements to customers based mostly on their knowledge and promoting shopper knowledge to different service suppliers. No matter the way you dissect it, there’s a battle there. How can Twitter declare to be a bastion of free speech, when its major supply of revenue is monetizing that speech – consumer knowledge – whereas sustaining centralized management over what individuals can say, who can say it and what the general public sees on the platform.
In a latest TED speak, Musk mentioned a number of the points he sees with Twitter and the way he plans to handle them. The options he proposed virtually oozed the Web3 ethos, with out him explicitly saying that Twitter wanted to transition to a Web3 mannequin. He successfully acknowledged that Twitter wants transparency, immutability and, if he had been to succeed (he has), decentralized possession if in any respect potential – all core parts of the open, user-owned Web3 web.
Now that Mr. Musk successfully owns Twitter, one can assume that he can nudge the corporate towards that route. If it’s to go there, it would finally have to beat the conflicting philosophies of getting a decentralized platform that empowers people, whereas surreptitiously utilizing these people for large knowledge earnings.
There is a greater option to drive really decentralized possession of huge platforms equivalent to Twitter whereas empowering people and eliminating the issues of censorship and overreach. The cryptocurrency and blockchain business is affected by good concepts and initiatives, lots of which may simply be scaled as much as successfully clear up these points. But what of the existential battle on the coronary heart of the enterprise? The reply lies on the very core of Web3, the place – in keeping with the Web3 Foundation – the very first tenet is “an web the place…customers personal their knowledge, not firms.”
There it’s: Step one in every of addressing this situation. Will this be a troublesome promote within the Twitter board room? Probably. Like with the opposite issues, is Web3 already producing initiatives that show how this may be finished correctly? Absolutely.
Projects like Cirus are closing the hole between customers and their knowledge, and exhibiting how together with the consumer within the worth equation gained’t break the enterprise mannequin of the web. In reality, the very concept of customers proudly owning their knowledge brings manufacturers and customers nearer collectively in a non-adversarial manner. The finish result’s higher knowledge, extra effectivity, and extra worth for all events concerned. The greasy, behind-the-scenes nature of Web2 big-data enterprise fashions will show to be inefficient and clunky by comparability.
Cirus’ Web Extension permits customers to personal, and begin incomes from their very own knowledge. It is the primary in a lineup of instruments designed to arm customers with probably the most complete and priceless model of their data-asset. That asset then turns into the consumer’s entry level into different Web3 companies and ecosystems. This resolution is philosophically in step with the remainder of Musk’s “sort of Web3” plans for Twitter and it solves the inconsistency on the coronary heart of the platform.
That identical dilemma exists inside many of the main Web2 big-data pushed platforms. An elegant option to pivot away from the “we’re taking your knowledge whilst you’re distracted” enterprise mannequin is required. In this manner, Cirus could be the conduit for Web2-based platforms and firms to transition into Web3. With it, they may achieve the advantages of transparency, particular person empowerment, democratized entry to incomes alternatives, and the community results that can accrue in numerous ecosystems constructed round Web3 fashions.
While many firms are nonetheless on the fence about taking the plunge into Web3 (and understandably so, since they don’t need to relinquish their centralized management of their platforms and ecosystems), forward-thinking enterprise leaders equivalent to Elon Musk are making it clear that the present mannequin is solely unsustainable and the Internet, maybe prior to later, should pivot to the decentralized Web3….even when he’s simply casually spending $44 Billion, reasonably than saying it instantly.
The final piece, the elephant within the room, is who will personal the consumer knowledge. With Web3 you possibly can’t have your cake and eat it too. Platforms should discover a option to really embody the consumer within the worth equation. Cirus is on the forefront of this transition and invitations everybody to affix the revolution by visiting https://cirusfoundation.com/.
