The World Needs Decentralized Social Networks

Social media has enormous potential, but most people aren’t actually enjoying their time on today’s platforms. The issues are well known and if these platforms were shaped around what users actually wanted, they could be incredible. But the priorities of the centralized companies and individuals behind them always come first, leading to worse products for the world.

Adversarial Relationships Between Users and Platforms

It has now been well-established that the most popular networks are designed to maximize attention at all costs, often in ways that are detrimental to health and society. The initial vision was that social media would connect the world, empower independent creators, and give a voice to the voiceless, but years later we are more divided than ever, creators have become subservient to algorithms, and censorship is a serious concern across the political spectrum.

Numerous studies have highlighted that social media in its current form is likely contributing to increasing levels of depression and anxiety, and it's all tied back to the platform design. The algorithms that encourage us to stay on the apps, are the same algorithms that divide us and silence our voices. This problem has been recognized for nearly a decade now, and people have been demanding changes, but the companies are far too powerful, centralized and singularly focused on generating profit for their shareholders to change course.

Centralized Values

Centralized entities also tend to have centralized values, and those biases inevitably embed themselves in the platforms they create. When a small group holds all the power, their worldview inevitably shapes the rules, and the results.

Twitter is a clear example of this. Despite changing hands and undergoing abrupt shifts in policy over the past few years, large segments of the population continue to express frustration with how the platform curates content.

The roles have simply reversed. Those who once criticized the platform now feel it's headed in the correct direction, while many who were previously satisfied are leaving with the same frustrations their opponents once voiced. The underlying issues haven’t been resolved, they’ve just shifted sides.

Platform Fragmentation

Now there’s a new wave of competing social networks aiming to attract the disillusioned, from established players like Meta with Threads to upstart platforms like Bluesky offering alternative visions.

However, this creates fragmentation and diminishes the network effect of all these competing applications, making them much less powerful than they were before. Artists are reaching fewer people with their work, activists are reaching fewer people with their message, and power-users are trapped in echo chambers where they are rarely exposed to opposing viewpoints.

Platform Neutrality

We live in a diverse world with a wide range of opinions, so our communication infrastructure must remain neutral to support open participation. This doesn’t mean that there is no need for content moderation.

Some level of moderation is needed to protect users from harassment, doxing, and fraud, but this also doesn't justify the very intentional curation of content across the platform. The distinction between “moderation” and “curation” of content is important, though these terms are often used interchangeably. Curation is about choosing what people see, down to very granular details, much like you would in an art gallery. On the other hand, moderation is less invasive and typically operates on more of a case-by-case basis.

All of the major social networks today are very intentionally curating the content that people see, but they’re doing it under the guise of moderation, which is largely why these terms have become so confused. Reasonable moderation would give users control over their own feeds and interactions, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all algorithms to make those decisions for them.

Decentralization

Several new projects have emerged in recent years aiming to solve these problems through decentralized approaches, especially in the web3 space. Farcaster and Lens are the top web3 social networks, and they have taken similar hybrid approaches, with onchain social graphs and offchain content.

This has been a massive improvement over web2 because now with onchain social graphs, users can have ownership over their contact lists. However, since the content itself is still hosted offchain, some of the same risks around permanence remain. If for some reason one of these platforms decides to shut down their servers or ban certain content, they will have that ability. Web3 founders typically value openness and decentralization, but as these platforms grow, they will face increasing pressure from nation states and investors to make compromises as they scale.

Everything and Everyone Onchain

Hybrid approaches have been necessary because it’s been very hard to put data on existing blockchains, but Somnia was designed to handle loads of onchain data without compromising speed, cost, or user experience. This is a core breakthrough that enables new features and use-cases, across many sectors, including social media. With the ability to build fully onchain, developers can create truly decentralized social platforms where the users control their own data, content and contact lists.

This will most likely just be the beginning of a much larger shift.

Decentralized social networks have the potential to replace today’s broken platforms by fundamentally rethinking how these systems should work. If users control their data, their feeds, and their communities, the adversarial dynamic disappears. The incentives change, and platforms can finally be built around what people actually want: connection, creativity, and real conversation.

The technology is here. The question now is whether we’re ready to stop optimizing for clicks and start building things that people actually want.

About Somnia

Somnia is the fastest, most cost-effective EVM Layer-1 blockchain, capable of processing over 1 million transactions per second with sub-second finality and sub-cent fees. Somnia’s performance enables real-time, fully onchain experiences that go beyond financial applications. It’s the ideal foundation for building large-scale games, social platforms, AI-powered applications and much more.