Social Media Platforms: Decentralized or Centralized, which way forward? By @swaylee

_{image made using Canva}

Good day everyone,
Welcome to my blog, today we would be looking at a rather argued topic all around Steemit which is; Are Decentralized Social Media platforms like Steemit better than the popularly known and widely used centralized social media applications? I would utilize this post to bring more points to the argument and you get to choose which of them has actually won the argument. Without wasting any more time, let's get started

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What is Social Media Platform?

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When we hear social media, it always has to do Sharing content or something to a wide range of people or users. A social media platform is a digital place, application or site where users can interact with each other by sharing content which could be photos, music, links, texts and so on. This shared content can be seen by users all around the platform and even from outside the platform.

On a normal circumstance when we hear social media especially in a layman society, the first thing that comes to our mind are centralized social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, line, Facebook which makes it look like there are no decentralized social media platforms meaning many people especially crypto ignorant don't have any idea about the existence of a Decentralized system. Some people can't even differentiate between the both of them so I would be defining both.

A Centralized social media platform is one where all the activities of users are monitored and managed by a central body. To make an account on a centralized media app, you submit your personal and private details like phone number, date of birth, all your names and you might even be asked to input your home address and passport/ selfie. The central body has major control over your account meaning they can freeze it, delete your content off the surface of their platform and in dire cases they can track you both with their app and your details.

A Decentralized Social Media platform is one where users get to share their content on a open source peer to peer network where everyone is in-charge of their account without third party involvement. Not all decentralized media make use of Blockchain technology but in this post I would be making reference to the ones that use blockchain technology. Here everyone has sole control over their account and making an account here does not involve any personal information in most cases probably an email or phone number in the highest case scenario.

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Some Differences Between the Two

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SN	Decentralized	Centralized
1	You are paid for the quality of your content and this encourages creativity and proof of brain	They do not pay their users especially the average users
2	They do not demand much customer/ user information	They require alot of user personal data
3	The users have full autonomy over their account	The users account is at the mercy of the central body
4	Content here are immune to censorship or manipulation from anyone	The central body can choose to manipulate or even erase the content from their platform
5	Heightened account security due to being built on a blockchain network. Asides the incident in 2016, you never hearing someone saying their Steemit account got hacked except they fell for malicious link scam or their keys get compromised	Low level of security especially on applications like Facebook where a users account is easily hacked and used to scam his/her friends. It's so common that people don't trust just anyone on Facebook.

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How has decentralized social media platforms like steemit change the lives of its users

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It gives us a purpose to write meaningful content. Places like Facebook and Twitter where users come and post anything they feel like from false information to meaningless content and or hurtful content, Steemit is a platform where we'll written and meaningful content is duly appreciated hence any one posting unnecessary content would either be muted or ignored.

It helps us to develop ourselves and our content. I have been on Twitter for 4 years now and an active member for that matter but just spending 8 months on Steemit, I have learnt many more things than on Twitter. It has also impacted greatly on my socialization and writing skills and this can be seen if you check my first month on Steemit and check my works now, you would see the huge difference and growth both in markdown use and posts.

A source of income and a leisure activity. Steemit is a very fun place and with the numerous communities, content and contests that cut across many parts of the world there is no way one would get tired of reading or making posts. When one is less busy, they can make posts to kill time and by doing this, they also earn money for the posts they made in their free time. That way Steemit kill two stones with one bird and that's why I'm always actively steeming.

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How We can Earn Steem, Tronix or Steem Dollars on Steemit

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As we must have seen or observed, Steemit doesn't pay users in fiat currencies but instead we get paid for our quality content with the use of three cryptocurrencies namely steem/ steempower, steem dollars and tronix (TRX).

✓ By participating in Contests
On Steemit, in order to keep activity up and growing, community moderators and administrators set up contests for their members where the top 3-5 and even every contestant with a valid entry can win a part of the prize pool. You can earn SBI, SBD, SP, STEEM, TRX, booming votes, beneficiary rewards or temporary delegation from contests.

✓ Curation Rewards
Whenever you vote on the post of a user, there is always a percentage of the payout attached to it which would always come back to you when the post pays out. This percentage increases depending on your current steem power. Attimes you come to your account and you see something like this

_{image taken from author's wallet}

These are the rewards from all the posts I have voted which have paid out.

✓ Making posts/ Comments and getting Curated
It's no news that when you make quality posts on Steemit, your posts get upvoted and 7 days from when the post was made, all the upvotes payouts and after the curator rewards are distributed, 50% (if beneficiary rewards weren't set) goes to the author of the post for their hardwork.

_{image taken from author's post page}

As you can see from the screenshot above, see the breakdown of what to receive from curation. This total amount u see above is shared between the beneficiary I set (20% ) and then 50% go to the curators so I end up with 30% of the total amount. That's how it is.

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Conclusion

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Decentralized Social Media platform is the way forward and our users would definitely increase if we promote it to the best of our ability because the problem is ignorance unless the daily users would definitely sky rocket.
Steemit is an amazing platform and instead of complaining for curation, we can steem smarter and stay active and consistent. After all the likes of Facebook and Twitter don't give us a dime for our content.

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_{All unsourced images used in this post were made using Canva
10% to @tron-fan-club}