The internet has become the agora[1] of modern times. Where in the old days people met at physical and specific geolocations to discuss political matters and other news, usually in a central square in the middle of the city or in amphitheatres at the periphery, today we do so online on social media platforms.
The question is not whether we are discussing politics over the internet or not (we obviously are), but rather if we are doing it in the right way.[2] Most official city portals rely heavily on "insecure" social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr to engage with the public, and very few incorporate complex participation tools such as forums, chat rooms, e-voting, etc., that could otherwise allow for more direct and consequential interaction.
Mass protest in Tunisia and birthplace of the Arab Spring which culminated in the exile of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia. Nine out of ten Tunisians used Facebook to organize the protests.
Most of the mass protests that have erupted since the early 2010s[3],[4], from Hong Kong[5] to Algeria and Lebanon, from riots in Portland, USA, to anti-government protests over covid measures around the world[6], all were organized on-line with laptops and smartphones, inspired by hashtags and coordinated through social networks.
Facebook pages were created to raise awareness of crimes committed against humanity, such as those relating to police brutality during the Egyptian Revolution, which culminated with the death of Khaled Mohamed Saeed or the death of George Floyd represented by the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA. In 2021 the invasion of the capitol by an angry mob in the USA is yet another example of the power of these platforms.[7] In response, many were the times when public authorities blocked or temporarily disrupted access to social media platforms. In 2018 alone there were 128 documented mandated internet shut-downs.
In 2021, the U.S. Capitol, where the national congress musters, was overrun by an angry mob that questioned the legitimacy of the electoral results for the presidential elections. Prior to the event, there were more than a million mentions of invading the capitol on social media on "alt-tech" platforms such as news aggregator site Patriots.win, chat app Telegram and microblog sites Gab and Parler.
The issue with most internet platforms is that anyone can claim to be whoever they want and there are few mechanisms in place to verify the identity of the person behind the computer. We can self-name ourselves by entering a nickname and we can create as many accounts as we want because there is usually nothing that binds a digital identity to a real person. This is both good and bad. On one side it allows for the free flow of information that could otherwise be more easily repressed. On the other, if there is no mechanism for accountability or traceability, i.e. if users cannot attest to the authenticity of their publications, interesting tools such as online voting become unavailable and the publication of harmful content[8] is encouraged because in general there are no penalties.
What happens in a world without a digital identity?
The web goes dark, in a sense.[9] It becomes an environment with weak moderation. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, after all, it's the internet we're talking about. What can be a surprise is that social media networks like Facebook are classified as highly insecure.
Prostitution is rampant on the platform.[10] Bots[11] that spread fake news[12] are also out-of-control.[13] Twitter is no different![14] These social bots can stage conversations similar to humans and often go unnoticed by the less attentive users.[15] Their ability to influence human behaviour should not be underestimated.
Research[16] clearly shows that bots accounted for about 11% of all hate tweets analysed in online conversations about controversial policies related to the Israel/Palestine and Yemen conflicts. They can influence our thinking and define narratives![17],[18] At the same time we have over one million users accessing Facebook completely anonymously.
[19] All of these points should not be regarded as cheap criticism. It is consensually difficult to monitor content on the internet.[20] But awareness of these facts and the characteristics that define the platforms that we use is important. The claim isn't that content on the internet, in general, is impossible to moderate. It could be.
[21] The task however is immensely difficult and often requires state powers and resources to be effective, at least under the current paradigm. Artificial intelligence algorithms are improving by the day and can make the task easier.[22],[23] But just as AI techniques become more advanced, bots become better at manipulating humans as well. There has to be a better way to be on the internet.
Another trilemma
So for those who are deep into Web3, at some point or another during your incursion you've probably come across the so-called blockchain trilemma, coined by the creator of Ethereum, summarizing the fundamental problem of blockchain, the underlying architecture of Web3, as the need to find an equilibrium and reconciliation between three apparently mutually exclusive concepts: scalability, security, and decentralization.
Parallel to this trilemma perhaps is another one lurking around of equal importance, not related to the underlying software-hardware architecture, but which tries to reason the way that we as humans use the internet and how we can take advantage of it without falling into traps and pitfalls. Essentially stopping the world wide web from becoming the world wild west, the other ‘lemmas’ are moderation, identity, and privacy.
I think we can all agree that we need some form of content moderation online. To achieve this end, some form of identity needs to be established. But we also want to keep a certain level of pseudonymity for when we want to publish under an alias and not a real name and for this a special type of identity is necessary. Just as proof-of-stake and sharding were proposed as part of the solution to the blockchain trilemma, hopefully, there is a solution to this other triad.