I'm not in the habit of posting blockchain hype, and I appreciate the diverse communities devoted to a variety of topics. I have, however, noticed a significant difference between our culture here on HIVE and legacy social media from web2.0. This difference helps differentiate our platform from what came before: ownership.

If you post on Facebook, it's not your platform. You don't own your content. You don't even own your account. Your information may be sold, your content may be deleted, and your pages can all be [memory-holed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole) As a result, there is little incentive to curate or build. In contrast, blockchain social media is yours. You own your keys. You own your content. You have reputation and literal ownership stake in the system the moment you power up any tokens. As a result, there is an incentive to curate and create with conscious effort.

This doesn't mean it's perfect. We all saw what Justin Sun did almost two years prior to this post, corrupting the Steemit chain to steal tokens and censor critics. That exposed a major weakness in the old chain, and HIVE has (hopefully) eliminated that avenue for attack. There are downvote trolls, and some people farm for bot votes, but that ownership stake does create an undeniable incentive toward greater responsibility. It tends to weed out a lot of small-time abusers who want consequence-free opportunities to harass people. Curation rewards encourage supporting quality content, and no outside monetization is necessary.

<center>![blockchain-g2def38b38_640.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/jacobtothe/23uEz8hAB9GCPzs59YTniQfkwRGaKwqAJqRGG1XSo4o5KQTc2wKxUmSPuQgVTcf6tkjFU.jpg)
[Image credit](https://pixabay.com/photos/blockchain-people-shaking-hands-2850276/)</center>

Now look at Facebook or Twitter. There is no in-built reputation metric aside from whether an account is verified or not. There is no mechanism inherent in the system to reward effort and honesty, or penalize sloth and dishonesty. The mechanisms for preventing abuse result in false charges and no accountability or remedy when people get suspended without cause. Reactions or thumbs up mean nothing more than a brief dopamine hit, and the attention economy requires outside factors to be monetized. The Facebook Metaverse isn't an evolution, just a new coat of paint on the old power dynamics of arbitrary terms of service and broken user support.

Blockchains are a massive leap forward with public and private keys authenticating ownership of accounts and content. Our decentralized system with multiple nodes, several front-ends, and no corporate headquarters mean resilience against government edicts and official demands for censorship. Our foundation is cooperation and consent. This requires, in turn, more personal responsibility to safeguard and correctly use keys. We also need to exercise even more discretion when it comes to verifying content. The reward is worth the effort to me, and if you are reading this, I suspect it is worthwhile to you, too.

If you're not on Hive yet, I invite you to join through [PeakD.](https://peakd.com/) If you use [my referral link,](https://peakd.com/register?ref=jacobtothe) I'll even delegate some Hive Power to help you get started. You, too, can have ownership in your content as we strive to build the next versions of both the internet and global financial structures whether the old corporate and political powers like it or not. 

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