What if Parler was a decentralised network?

Recently Parler is getting lot of attention on online and mainstream media, and not for a good reason. This is because Parler is getting banned from almost every service they have been using, from Amazon’s AWS, to Twilio for SMS verification. They also got their app kicked off from both Google PlayStore and Apple AppStore.

All due to the involvement of the network with the Capitol Hill riots on January 6th.

However, what if Parler was a decentralised network? with multiple nodes, ranging from hundreds to thousands. Technically abled users serving their own nodes, and mirrors with different domain names?

A decentralised network like this would be hard to kill. Yes, Google will kick them off PlayStore, and so will Apple from their AppStore. But no one will be able to purge the service off the internet.

The downside is that Parler won’t be able to make any money, because their code has to be open sourced, and their data won’t be centralised, and monetisation will be difficult.

Parler might not make a comeback. However the networks of the future, especially networks of the extremists will be decentralised, funded by the followers, developed and maintained by extremists and loyalists, ultimately making it difficult or even impossible to completely remove from the internet.

One can argue that Parler, Trump and his followers all failed or lost their contact because they replied on several centralised services, which nor Trump or his followers had any control. (YouTube, Twitter, AWS etc)

And just imagine someone like Donal Trump, charging his followers on a decentralised network instead on Twitter? That is a scary thought to think about, but a thought that might become a reality in future.

3 responses

  1. There’s the federated platforms, of course. Gab is a mastodon fork. Their monetization is via premium accounts. Spinster’s– this is an instance dedicated to women who don’t think males can become women– monetization is via community support. There’s definitely methods here, just takes some creativity. The issues here lay in the fact that the fediverse is just as interested in deplatforming as the main tech bros. Fdroid won’t host the spinster app on their repo, and tusky, a multipurpose mastodon mobile app– won’t let you log into either a gab account OR a spinster one.

    Despite these issues, I definitely think mastodon, mastodon forks, pleroma, or other fediverse software would do just fine for Parler’s userbase. Especially the idea of multiple people hosting their own instances. The fediverse skews very liberal, and while there are a few pleroma instances dedicated to free speech, very few big instances federate with them.

    Scuttlebutt is another platform that may be interesting.

    1. Yes, agreed. But then now people will stop a group of rioters organizing on a decentralized platform?

      How a decentralized platform cut down a mad dictator from brainwashing his followers

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