Hello Professor @yousafharoonkhan, I am @smartcliff one of your students and this is my homework submission post on Centralized and Decentralized social media. Special regards to Cryptoacademy for the privilege to participate in this community.

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the social media have grown to become one of the most powerful media platforms in the world.
Social media are platforms that allow people to connect to each other via the Internet without having to meet physically irrespective of the distance between them. So it is really a welcome development as it has greatly enhanced communication and information dissemination and also help many businesses in terms of advertising and publicity. It has also created a bridge between people trying to communicate from long distances like intercontinental and interstate.
Social media also create platforms for people with like-minds to gather and engage in joint activities and projects online.
Having said all these it is now clear that the benefits of social media are very many and versatile.

Decentralized & Centralized Social Media

There are two types or groups of social media today and they are the Centralized and Decentralized Social media. We will be taking them one after the other.

Centralized Social Media

Centralized social media are social media platforms that have a central authority that coordinate or directly control everything that goes on in the platform. Just like the centralized exchanges, this authority makes rules on how the platform is run and have the power to delete posts, block accounts and regulate the platform.

So in this type of social media, the users do not have full control over their accounts but only operate within the limits the central command allows them to operate.

In most cases, centralized social media platforms can be owned by one person or a group of persons and they create the policies that other users must follow or risk the chance of being kickout of the platform or blocked and thereby loose all the influence and work they already accomplished with the account.

Recently there have been many incidents of people getting blocked and removed from centralized social media platforms just for expressing their own views and opinions which goes against the standards of the authority in charge of the platform.

So in my opinion, centralized social media actually limits people from freely expressing their views especially of it's controversial.

Examples of centralized social media includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp.

Decentralized Social Media

Decentralized social media are social media platforms that do not have a central authority but instead operate with the blockchain system.

These social media are fully owned by the users and as such a direct opposite of centralized social media.
I'm decentralized social media, data of users are stored in many servers connected by blockchain and so nobody's account can be blocked or suspended like in the centralized, hence everyone has full freedom of expression of thoughts and opinions.

Examples of decentralized social media includes Steemit, Dtube, Mastodon, GNU Social and Indorse.

Differences between Decentralized and Centralized Social Media

Decentralized Social Media	Centralized Social Media
It is not owned by any central authority instead users have full control of their accounts	It is owned by a central authority and users have limited control of their accounts
Accounts cannot be blocked or banned, hence there is full freedom of expression	Accounts can be blocked and banned by the central authority hence freedom of expression is limited
User's data is stored on several servers by blockchain technology hence accounts cannot be hacked	User data are all stored on one main server, hence can be hacked
Privacy is topnotch as only you have control of your account	Privacy is limited as the central authority also has control to you account
Less popular	More popular

Which is the Future of Social Media

Although the centralized social media are for more popular and have almost everyone worldwide using them, I still believe that in time to come majority of social media users will switch to decentralized social media because of the benefits and surety it proposes.

For example, like I mentioned before there are several cases of people being banned from popular social media platforms like Facebook and twitter because they have contrary opinions to what the authorities of these platforms approve and this is gradually limiting people from expressing their views on these platforms for fear of being blocked and banned and thereby losing their influence on these platforms and so right now everyone wants a social media where they won't be controlled or blocked for expressing their views and the answer to this want is decentralized social media.

Personally I am already moving over to decentralized social media because I want my account security assured. So in the next few decades I believe there would be a massive switching to decentralized social media.

The first and most important benefit that makes Steemit better than Facebook and twitter is freedom of expression without fear of getting blocked or banned.
We have seen many users being blocked on these platforms because they are centralized but this can't happen in Steemit because it is decentralized.

Secondly, although they all register users free of charge Steemit rewards it's users for their activities in the platform but Facebook and twitter don't do that.

Thirdly, in Steemit data of users are stored in several servers through the blockchain technology so there is no chance of user's accounts getting hacked or manipulated but in Facebook and twitter there are many cases of accounts getting hacked and manipulated because they are centralized.

How Steemit Changes the lives of millions of it's users

I believe Steemit has been doing very well in affecting the lives of people positively especially among the middleclass and poor populations.

I wasn't interested in writing and cryptocurrency until I joined steemit and it was when I joined that I started discovering my skills in writing as I started posting in various groups and engaging in some competitions on steemit and I believe millions of people in Steemit have similar stories
Also I knew close to nothing about the crypto market and how to utilise it until I joined steemit. I owe 90% of my knowledge of cryptocurrency to Steemit Crypto Academy and many other posts I came across in Steemit.
So we can see that steemit have indeed enlightened a lot of people in various fields

Financially steemit has been a source of wealth to so many people that engage in the platform through the curation and author rewards and I am also one of these people and I also know some people that have a lot of money through steemit.

Lastly Steemit has helped many people break out of the jinx of having to cope with centralized social media where they are limited from doing some posts due to the dictatorship-like structure of the platforms.

How to make money with Steemit decentralized social media

In Steemit decentralized social media there are a number of ways to earn but can be grouped into two;

• Author Rewards
• Curation Rewards
  Author rewards is gotten from posts you make when they are upvoted. In Steemit there are many communities with different topics on which you can post and earn from the upvotes including; steemit cryptoacademy, steemit nursery, Newcomers community, Steemalive to mention but a few. In this communities you can also engage in competitions and challenges where the winners are rewarded.

Curation rewards are gotten when you upvote the posts of others. When the posts pays out it is shared between the author and curators at 50% for each party.
So in this way you can also earn by upvoting the posts of other steemians.

How to create community on steemit social media

• Login to steemit and click on this field

• scroll down and click on explore communities

• now click on create a community

• Enter title of community and About community then you click on next

• Now you save your community password, click the checkbox and then click create community

• Now you will pay 3 steem for creating the community so click ok to continue

• Enter your active key and proceed by clicking sign in

This is the last step and then your community is done. I didn't show the created community because I've powered up my steem so I can't do it for now.

Conclusion

Having carefully looked into the lecture and made my own research I think it's very predictable that in the nearest future we are likely to have more popularity in decentralized social media especially Steemit because the awareness of decentralized social media is rapidly increasing everyday and many people are developing interest in decentralized social media

Thanks for reading through and do have a great day ahead

Cc: @yousafharoonkhan