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The role of Blockchain in bringing data decentralization and privacy
Since the decentralization idea has started to grow in the minds of Internet users, issues such as centralization and lack of data privacy have started to become increasingly apparent. For years, these concepts have continued to grow and provide people with dreams of a utopian form of the web, until the clash they reached in 2018.
Last year was very active in this sense and the centralization (or rather the excessive centralization) of social media and other platforms has become a very obvious trend. Technological giants like Google or Facebook have not had real competition for years, which has allowed them to gather influence and power. They promised the free use of their platforms, but in turn bombarded them with advertisements and data from registered users.
Data privacy was lacking and in the last 15 years we have come to a point where there is almost no transparency regarding the way our information is used. Users of these services had no idea what is happening with their data, how and if their data is protected, or even what data is recorded. Everything changed in 2018.
The point that had the greatest impact on the awareness of the problems of public data was the analytical scandal of Cambridge. For the occasion, it was discovered Facebook data it was collected and used fraudulently for the purpose of political campaigns, manipulation of the public and gathering information on current trends and user interests. After illusion of data security It was broken by this incident, news about data breaches, hacker attacks and even more problems on Facebook emerged.
As mentioned, none of these things appeared in 2018. They had been there for years and we became more aware only in the last year. In fact, numerous data breaches were discovered years ago. Facebook the same has lost data for years and the violation of the Marriott hotel company has lost sensitive information of nearly 400 million customers over several years.
A change of attitude towards Blockchain
Clearly, there is an obvious connection between the data privacy issues and centralization of most online platforms and activities. These companies do not have anyone to watch them data protection and use practicesand until 2018, they were not held responsible for what they do with the information they collect.
Furthermore, the increase in hacking attacks is due to the fact that large amounts of private information were stored on centralized servers. The braking in these databases has promised a lot of private information that can be sold at very attractive prices.
In recent years, more people have become aware of these problems and have begun to propose decentralized alternatives as a way to combat problems. However, the creation of this alternative is not only extremely complicated, but it should also find a way to solve a series of problems, which at the moment is not possible. However, since most people do not have a clear understanding of how blockchain technology works, many overly optimistic forecasts have begun to circulate on the web.
He has arrived at a point where blockchain it was considered the cure for all modern problems. "Use the blockchain and everything will be fine" has become a trend in 2017 and has expanded until 2018. However, the uproar began to fade when people realized that the situation is not as easy as it seems, occurred at the time. approximately at the same time as cryptic prices started to fall. Soon, the trend took a completely different turn and many began to call blockchain technology useless, simply because it was not at the height of their expectations, which were made of misunderstandings about the limits of technology.
Now, at the beginning of 2019, after the original hype and the subsequent correction have ceased, it seems that things are starting to stabilize. People's expectations of blockchain and crypto are becoming more realistic, and technology enthusiasts are starting to explore what blockchain really can do instead of what they want it to do. Thanks to this, realistic solutions are finally starting to appear.
Can Blockchain protect data privacy?
One of the biggest expectations of blockchain technology is still to fix social media platforms and guarantee true data privacy. However, as many people are aware at this point, blockchain it is a method to achieve transparency, which is evident from the fact that it is used to make transactions, all of which are publicly visible and available at any time. In other words, blockchain is a tool to get the verification without having to depend on a centralized institution. This does not make it a platform that can replace or repair existing platforms.
Blockchain could have brought the decentralization idea to the modern world, but can not guarantee the confidentiality of data. However, there is an alternative and the solution may lie in non-blockchain aspects that can lead to decentralization on the web, while ensuring that privacy remains unbroken. This includes things like decentralized storages, oracles, status channels, privacy calculations, and the like. In this way, the data will still be calculated from the nodes, but they will also be encrypted, which will prevent the nodes from knowing what they are working with.
Obviously, decentralization and safe calculation are not new concepts. In fact, they've been around since the Internet has become. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency they are still younger concepts of decentralization and data privacy. However, it is only now that these concepts have become so attractive to us because we now understand the dangers of not using these solutions.
If there is no centralized authority that can benefit from the collection and misuse of our data, platform development can really be dedicated to what is really important: the safety and security of users. This is a train of thoughts that has begun to dominate in recent years, and 2019 it should be the year that more privacy-oriented projects are designed, with some of them even starting to reach their end users.
However, it is important to understand that the technologies that can provide these solutions are still under development. There will be many trials and errors and it may take years before we reach the solutions we imagine right now. All these technologies are extremely complex and it is not possible to combine them to get a secure and decentralized Internet from one day to the next.
The next step
As mentioned, blockchain hype is dead, and both developers and consumers are now focusing on what can actually be achieved with this technology. Meanwhile, problems of centralization and data privacy they are becoming more and more evident in the world, and it will not be long before people realize that these problems are connected and that one is causing the other. Furthermore, it is believed that in many of these cases this is done on purpose and that it is not just an unfortunate incident.
However, people must also realize this blockchain it is not a magical solution and has its limits. All we need to do this has already happened, and all that is left now is to draw conclusions from these events. This is why it is expected 2019 will focus on educating people on the blockchain, its limits, data privacy issues, centralization issues, decentralized solutions and technologies, and more. This is the next step towards a truly decentralized and secure Internet.
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