The Ethereum-based distributed social network that now has over 3M users, Minds, had recently announced that it has partnered with a decentralized startup Arweave to allow the users to save their social media posts to the blockchain-based permaweb.
This moves against potential censorship seen at more mainstream, regulated social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The function lets Minds users choose to save their posts to Arweave’s blockchain storage solution. The feature will be obtainable to the users this month.
“Our partnership with Arweave and this integration provides users with an invaluable, immutable, and censorship-resistant backup of their content,” Minds founder and CEO Bill Ottoman stated.
“Given the chaos we are witnessing on mainstream social networks with regards to censorship, surveillance, and algorithmic manipulation, Minds provides users with a more resilient, decentralized, and trustless infrastructure to build their digital archive.”
Ottoman noted the official feature implementation with a post from last week that features a quote from George Orwell’s 1984: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, and the lie became the truth.” Clicking the “Permaweb” button above the post showed the Arweave backup on the permaweb.
Arweave’s decentralized storage platform requires the users to pre-pay for the theoretically endless storage, with interest earned on the payment used to continue the funding service for the years, decades, and probably centuries ahead. The service bets on the data costs and continues to dwindle over the years to come and incentivize the node operators and miners with a token-based economy.
Minds and Arweave both have seen interest from prominent investors. Reasons have already secured a $6M Series A investment from Overstock.com’s Medici Ventures last 2018, and it follows an equity crowdfunding campaign. This year, Arweave had announced a new $8.3M funding round from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square, and Coinbase Ventures, following the previous $5M round.
Minds have been seen as a refuge for people pushed away from more extensive social networks, whether it’s Thai dissidents rebelling against the country’s free speech restrictions or those who have been deplatformed elsewhere for what is seen as extreme views. We asked Ottoman whether the ideal is for Minds to ultimately become fully decentralized.
Ottoman has been asked if the ideal is for Minds to eventually become fully decentralized.
“The goal is to create the next-generation social network where users are in control of their data and their digital lives,” he replied. “We are becoming as decentralized as possible and Arweave brings us much closer to that vision. We open-sourced our code for this microservice and 100% of our software here for maximum transparency and community collaboration.”
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