Brian of London back again on Israellycool. A few months ago, I posted here about a giant class action law suit against Facebook, Google and Twitter (collectively the Tech Goliaths) on behalf of the entire Cryptocurrency and Blockchain industry.
Like most tech these days, Israel plays a disproportionate role in this sphere. Just next week there is a major series of in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv Blockchain Week)
Around the same time I encouraged Dave to also set up a system whereby everything on Israellycool is cross posted to something called the “Steem Blockchain”. I want to try to explain what this is for people who’ve never understood how the Internet works (let alone understanding weird stuff like Bitcoin and blockchains!).
Web 2.0
Almost everything you think of today on the Internet is Web 2.0. A centralized service (like Facebook for example) owns and runs a lot of computers (servers) running software that they wrote themselves to deliver a service to you. Most of the time you get the service (like seeing your old school friend’s cat pictures) for free. To pay for writing the software, buying the computers and powering them (these are huge costs) the “service” shows you adverts and sells some part of what it knows about you to advertisers.
Even Israellycool operates this way. Dave rents the server, makes use of partly paid for commercial and partly free software and tries to recover some of these costs with advertising on the site. Dave’s not in a position, like Facebook, to sell your browsing history on Israellycool for tons of cash and he doesn’t get to receive all the advertising money as he has to use expensive middle men (like Google) that take up to 70% of the revenue to show you ads.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and Israellycool are all centralized: the three Goliaths have a great many servers so they’re not in trouble if one fails; Israellycool is not able to do that. The software and data that combine to deliver Israellycool to you are held on one server (with backups). There is a better way.
Web 3.0
As I said above, every post on Israellycool is currently copied to something called Steem. That means they’re stored by around 100 independently motivated different people and entities who are all running the same software to make everything work.
At the same time there are multiple different sites on which the same content can be viewed. Here’s just one post on multiple sites: SteemIt (the original company that designed Steem), Steempeak (one of my favourites), Busy.org to give just three. The point being that to remove this content from the web, is now a much harder problem for censors. The data is distributed and it can be viewed in numerous ways.
For Israellycool readers
If you’re interested in exploring Steem, I can help you join! Because Steem doesn’t treat you and your data the way Facebook does, as a product to be sold to advertisers, there is a cost to joining Steem. But I’ll happily sponsor Israellycool readers onto Steem. It’s another place you can interact and perhaps find interesting content. And (slowly at first) each action you take such as leaving a comment or upvoting a post, will result in you being rewarded. Contact me direct on Twitter or Telegram.
For Steemians
This post serves as absolute confirmation that the Steem account israellycoolblog is 100% under the control of the Israellycool website and any cross posting of content between Israellycool on the web and israellycoolblog on Steem is authorised.
