By: Jason Warner.
While executives from Facebook and Twitter are facing questions about centralized censorship of our social media feeds, new opportunities are popping up to take more control of our posted content. Ownership of data has long been a subject of contention. Does the person or company generating it own it? Does the platform own it? What about the images we post to an Instagram feed? Even if we still own the original, are we giving rights in perpetuity to the platform? The 2020 election is bringing these questions and more to the forefront of a global debate.
At Fortress Data Centers, we are preparing for the movement of core data from centralized systems to hybrid and more decentralized storage and processing environments. When we consider that all data we transmit using technology is generated from a device, the idea of that device as local becomes central to the movement to Edge Computing. The emergence of distributed ledger and blockchain technology aligns with our belief that we can start to control more of our data at the source and use it with other permissioned data for processing to help solve tasks and problems.
On the social media front, new platforms like Parler are bringing so-called censor free speech so that you can “Speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being “deplatformed” for your views.” And decentralized platforms such as The Butterfly Protocol promise to bring a decentalized approach to domain names, opening up a way to use decentralized apps for publishing. With decentralization, there is no central control manager who can shut you off, delete you and censor you. The content lives forever if it is accessed. It can fade away if no one looks at it because the links get buried but the content is always there.
The difference between what Parler is doing and what The Butterfly Protocol is doing is policy versus technology automation. Policy can be changed. Imagine that a government forces a platform like Parler to change its policy to allow interal people to censor content. Then we are right back to where we are with the current platforms. Technology automation that is decentralized means that once content is posted, only the owner can change it or delete it. You are authenticated based on your identity on the blockchain.
This leads to the ownership question of the data. If you post it and are the only one who can manage it, you own it by default. When you own and control data, you have the power. You can lease it, sell it, give it away, pool it and learn from it. Edge computing allows us to process at the edge and use hybrid cloud systems to your benefit.
Imagine the future where every IoT device you own is putting out data about you. We need Edge Computing to store and process this data while connecting a 5G network to support the local use and integrate with the broader systems in the cloud. Fortress Data Centers will connect all of these systems to support our customers and their customers. With carrier-neutral, 5G enabled Meet-Me Rooms, Mission Critical Colocation, Software Defined Network integration, and more, We Are Here to help drive the innovation of data movement, ownership, and control.
