While the social media of Web2 has delivered popular, easy-to-use one-stop shops for mass online social interaction, we lost some of the magic of the old-school peer-to-peer message boards and content sharing applications along the way. Censorship resistance, free speech, user control, data rights, privacy, security, and imbalanced economics all traded in for the convenience of giant centralized platforms with flashy UIs and an addictive experience. Data became the lifeblood of the modern global economy, and users offered up as the product.

The corporate entity control of major centralized social media sites and the relatively small group of people who set the platform rules raises concerns regarding free speech and censorship among users. As we have repeatedly seen over recent years, governing bodies can be influenced to silence certain high-profile users or groups while favoring narratives of the influencers. While some believe banning dangerous messaging is the right of any private platform to protect its users; who decides whether or not messages are dangerous? Is there an external influence on such decision-making? Does that run contrary to the ideals of free speech in a world where public discourse is increasingly held online with so few mainstream options available?

Well-documented hacks, privacy abuses, and data breaches also continue to pose severe risks to users. Concerns over the control and security of personal data held by centralized entities have led to increasingly strict regulation, particularly in Europe. While arguably improving privacy, transparency, and security standards, these regulations also come at a cost to businesses, solidifying the monopoly of these global corporations and making it harder for new disruptors to challenge their position. Centralized social media platforms still retain control over data and content, extracting almost all of the value it provides from users, without the incentive to share with those who create it, and subjecting them to invasive advertising models.

myMessage is a decentralized Reddit-like social media platform and data portal for Web3 applications. Its data storage and messaging dApp solution will run on a multi-chain structure using quantum-resistant encryption, supported by the Zilliqa, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon networks. The Reddit-like thread-reply bulletin board will also be built on Polygon’s low-cost, high-speed layer 2 blockchain technology, having been awarded a development grant from the network.

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