Web3 Socials: The Future of Social Media and Human Verification

I just watched a recent Bankless podcast “Leaving Web2 with Sriram Krishnan” and it really got me thinking about the future of social media. Sriram has previously worked at Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat before becoming a GP at a16z Crypto. In the podcast he discusses what is broken about Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and whether it can be fixed. He also discusses the future of content creators, how crypto and AI intersect, and much more. After you finish this article, go watch the podcast. You’ll thank me later!

The Status Quo: Web2 Social Media

For the last several years, the social media industry has been dominated by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. But there are some rampant issues that occur on all of these platforms, much of them centered around bots and account verification.

Bots can and have been used to spread misinformation and propaganda, impersonate real users, and skew public opinion around pressing topics.

The current verification processes, such as blue checkmarks, are limited and can be circumvented or faked, leading to a false sense of security and authenticity. This inability to verify whether an account is human or not erodes trust in these platforms and discourages real users from engaging and sharing content.

Yes, encouraging users to pay money to prove their humanity can reduce bots, but what if you had to pay $8 on each social media platform you use? Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitch, Discord, and more? That can add up quickly and would make it more difficult for smaller, newer platforms to compete with established players.

The Social Media of Tomorrow

What if social media platforms used ENS instead? One ENS registration would work across all platforms, verifying that the user is a living, breathing human being. While this may negatively impact short-term income for social media companies, it will have positive long-term effects by increasing the quality of content and creating a premium user base.

Adapting to new technologies is crucial for survival in the industry. As with anything, if you don’t innovate, you die. And the companies who refuse to pivot will collect dust along with the fax machines and pagers of the past.

Web3 Enhancements with AI

ENS offers solutions to multiple problems, such as decentralized ID authentication and management, payments and financial transactions, bot prevention, and censorship-resistant website and storage solutions. Add AI to the mix in web3 and the old web2 social media will look like a floppy disk in a world of cloud storage.

I realize that AI and ENS can be viewed as direct opposites of each other; ENS verifies Proof of Humanity, while AI is Not Human by definition. Despite their differences, it’s important to recognize the opportunities that they present when paired together.

AI can also play a crucial role in this process. With the help of machine learning algorithms, social media platforms can train AI to detect and remove fake accounts, spam, and other types of fraudulent activity. AI can be taught to recognize patterns of behavior that are associated with bots, thus allowing these platforms to act more quickly and effectively to root out these fake accounts.

In combination with ENS, AI can greatly improve the verification process for social media accounts, helping to create a more secure and trustworthy online environment.

There are many other ideas for integrating ENS and AI into social channels, such as including blockchain-integrated verification systems like CAPTCHA or the social companies creating their own ENS subnames for verified users.

Final Prediction

There are already a handful of web3 social networks online today such as Lens and Farcaster, with more competitors certainly springing up in the months ahead. Users who join these channels know that, by default, all other users are human.

My guess is that ENS and AI are going to eventually overtake the world, social media included. I’m not confident that any of the existing web2 social media companies are willing to do the hard work of restructuring the foundation of their platforms to appeal to the web3 crowd.

I would bet that the next generation of online users will never even create or own an account on any existing web2 platforms; they will instinctively begin their online social journey on a web3-specific channel. Whether that is Bluesky, Lens Protocol, Farcaster, or a yet-to-be-created application, that is TBD.

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.

Now you’re free to watch the Bankless podcast here!