Lessons - Creating the Future of the Internet | Michael Casey - Chief Content Officer & Chairman at CoinDesk

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future you've looked at so many examples of how decentralization hasn't worked i mean we can we can name we can name a couple different founders right we can talk about them too but and the projects they built but when you look at what you're trying to do with project liberty with the sort of the thesis of our biggest fight you're you're making the argument that we have to go back to a decentralized internet and we have infrastructure we have to rework but we've been trying to do this with blockchain web 3 NFTs and a lot of the stuff isn't working so i'm trying to identify what are the things that we have to incorporate in the future of the internet your version of the future of the internet that's going to make it so so certainly the core protocol change that we are highlighting as an example of the kinds of fixes that need to happen in this book the the decentralized social networking protocol or DSMP one of the features of it is that that even though it actually it relies on a blockchain underneath it for a certain amount of of data validation and and creating a steady state of information underneath that and it's core it doesn't have a token so it doesn't have a sort of a speculative element to it and and i think that's actually really really important you know there's this idea about how you design the tokenomics of a of a Bitcoin i think it's sorry of a block chain so that you you manage the supply and demand of the underlying token such that it doesn't get overwhelmed by the speculative thing if there's people that are madly buying the token because they all betting on the next big thing then flood it with supply and bring the price down because that's not what you're trying to achieve how you do that algorithmically so it's not nobody in charge because then that in itself was a question of decentralization is a is a really important question but i think at its core is like this you you need a permissionless decentralized architecture and that's what within a blockchain contract a context a token is necessary for these other sort of permission blockchains have all failed because at the end of the day there's a point of failure in some entity that's in charge and that's really defeating the purpose the thing is how do you get to this idea where the token that you need to enable this incentive driven permissionless system isn't overtaken by the speculative further and that's where this token database comes into it so I think Ethereum in fact is very good to look at because I think there's been an enormous amount of work that figuring out how do you actually manage the token supply and the incentives behind that to keep this thing honest um and so I think that's really an important part of this and to bring it back to the book and and so the DSMP I think we feel and the folks at project liberty who are behind this is if you had a token in there and and that became the sort of defining feature of the protocol it would just get overwhelmed by once again all the hype right you don't want this to be the point of this book is not to create yet another get rich opportunity for people to be able to change the infrastructure right and and and yes you need to have truly commissionless systems that that that enable that but the layers you know you we're those things lie within the stack are really important you know you mentioned that the first decentralized technology that you got interested in was the internet so obviously you've been you've been around for a while you've you've been here or I guess Jeremy age okay so let us let's talk about how the internet's changed like let's talk about what it was meant to be and how it's broken so I think like to think about the broken part um the journey that I've been on and we've all been on it by the way but I think as a journalist um who whose career spanned really the the pre internet age to now I used to literally write for a newspaper and the only vehicle we had to get that news out was a physical newspaper it wasn't many years by the way I'm not that old until it was quickly the internet came around and we had to think about that but I like to you know think about what was happening at that point and we were first of all excited wow look at all this information that's available to us and then not long down the path you know in the media industry we started to think a little bit oh my goodness this could be a challenge to our business model but the mindset we had at the time was we're going to be competed out of this by bloggers and citizen journalists and and a whole range of new um you know free-to-air website-based services that are just going to get into this so much more cheaply than we can and I was always conflicted by my concerns because I was thinking you know what but this is probably good for democracy you know having all the more voices out there who are able to to contribute and weigh in on on the big sort of public discourse so I was like you know we're going to live with this but come you know as as we say the app era this is post you know the worldwide web the dot-com boom and all the sudden Facebook and Twitter the social media phenomena were there and you know I'd been just writing doing my beautiful job of writing an article or two or three or four every every day and then suddenly I was also having a book post out and then podcasts and then TV and then most importantly I was having to tweet and you know we were all encouraged to be on social media because we had to fight to keep the eyeballs on us must compete with the you know in the internet attention grabbing game right why because the platforms were now constantly pushing us everywhere else and then you start to realize that you know you're actually competing yeah not with these alternative news outlets but with the algorithm itself because Facebook wanted your your eyeballs for the for their own advertisers not for us and then we think one step further and you look at the phenomenon that maybe some of your readers and viewers will be aware of SEO the famous search engine optimization concept and anybody in media I'm sure you will this will Scott has to play this game right it's figuring out what hey online that's changed everything right but what are you doing in that process you're trying to write the optimal catchy thing to keep an algorithm happy because it probably also I've seen in your media operation like wow why is this thing not getting any attention right now off Google yeah Google tweak the hour of course it's but it's not just then it's a social and you're like figuring out everything what's the latest dance that I got to do on text luckily so it's all but yeah it is right so we like to talk in the book about how the algorithm in fact is is is actually a combination of two factors it's the little software that is written to perform a certain repeated task but the other half it is actually biological right it's whatever it is that's clicking in our brains that responding to and if that's not getting enough engagement then the algorithm itself will tweak to find the next thing that is and that becomes the re reiterated iterative thing so these algorithms are one part software one part biological and that's really what's kind of scary about this is a human hack that's been going on for 20 years I just want to take a second and thank cornbread ham for supporting today's episode now cornbread ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work and what makes them special is how cornbread ham perhaps them they only use a flower of USDA organic hamplants that's the best part for the purest most potent experience no fillers no artificial fluff just clean full spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor I keep them in my night stand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing and I love how transparent they are too every batch is third party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting and they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners all listeners can save 30% off their first order just head to cornbread ham dot com slash success and use code success check out that's cornbread ham dot com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing dummies so you sort of realize that as a journalist and and you know what am I doing why we even doing this this is the moment that I think I really realized that in fact I think probably the the big aha moment of how broken it truly was was in 2016 and there was a famous article on Buzzfeed about this website that these kids literally teenagers in Macedonia had created in the middle of the you know a very fraught us election at that time right and they figured out that to generate a flywheel effect of ongoing shares and retweets and likes and everything that you need to get engagement in this social media environment all they had to do was just to make stuff up and land it in in a very highly passionate driven group on facebook so 2016 and if you wrote an article as these guys did of Obama's birth certificate found in Kenya or Pope Francis endorses Donald Trump or in fact there was also some some that were actually far more targeted at liberals right that would say like mass migration from the US to Ireland you know Trump flight migration patterns and all these sorts of things none of which were happening but because they triggered what people wanted to know amongst their very closed echo chamber facebook framed groups they got enormous traction so think about this right I was working at the the Wall Street Journal at the time we had an editor in chief below him as a deputy editor then there was a whole line of sub editors I have my own managing editor um we had lawyers we we put we had a we had buildings we we put um we gave people security clearances to go to wars right the cost of building and working on finding the truth and ensuring that that truth was delivered was enormous to actually establish and stand up what we were doing and we were now being competed out of it by bunch of kids in Macedonia who'd figured out how to game the algorithm better than we could with complete and utter lies so obviously you know social media platforms they take advantage of that because that's what drives engagement drives viewership the the commercial model is the more people on the platform the more money we make because they're not selling a product or service so they've massively capitalized not just social like a lot of big tech um government doesn't keep up with legislation government actually participating in the process not necessarily out of any nefarious and stupid they all have to right they're going to play the same social media guys they use that social for their own benefit right so politicians are all themselves participating in the same system and you have some examples like you have like um uh a ccpa and gdpr where they're trying to but it's still slow right so now this is this is like the central thesis is we got to do something better we got to rebuild i think the way we look at things like the those those two well-meaning and and obviously earnest and important acts of the you know california in the european one um what was that look trying to solve the right problem but actually still not low enough down in the stack right they're they're they're dealing with the surface level problem our argument is it's the control of the data that enables those breaches of privacy that enables the controls that have to be that needs to be addressed and the solution that we're addressing in this book is the uh the idea that we we can build protocol a pro specific protocol that enables the individual to control their data to determine who gets to see what when and how their own online activity their posts their content their tracking everything and and bringing that into into your control so that this concept of your social graph which is the the really the most valuable part of a social graph is this um complex network this web of relationships that you've built over time with all your interactions with everybody with every institution with every app right that story is incredibly valuable uh uh use the cell that that's what i use the cell data that this is because from out of that they extract information about who you are what you're likes are what you're dislikes are and that becomes incredibly valuable appetizers so all of that information is hidden it is you we we make the point and this is a um i think one of the most important things we need to start thinking about that that data is rightfully yours on on moral ground so this is actually a human right because individual age where all of our lives are online and all being tracked in this way the distinction between your physical personhood and your digital for all intensive purposes has completely disappeared so the control of that data should rightfully be yours we want people to rise up and demand this because that's the human rights aspects to this thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one