Why Facebook’s Data Leak Demonstrates the Need for a Decentralized Alternative

By Eric Ly, founder and CEO of Hub

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm made prominent through its work for the 2016 Trump campaign, have found themselves in deepening trouble over the past few weeks. The New York Times and The Observer of London concluded that the firm had harvested data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques to predict the behavior of individual American voters. After all, Facebook’s business model depends heavily on the effectiveness of advertisements shown to users and thus, on the quality of data collected. Just a quick look at one’s settings shows the extent to which the social network collects personal information. Not only does Facebook store your personal messages, likes, and friends — anything from your favorite music and films to a list of your family contacts, personal emails, and conversations with your loved ones is saved as well. Such centralization often leads to breaches of data, as seen in the recent Equifax and Yahoo hacks. Once a quiz app built by a university researcher in 2014 is able to leak the Facebook data of millions of people to a political consulting firm, it is clear that changes need to be made.

Unfortunately, fixing this problem under Facebook’s current model will certainly be difficult if not impossible. In an interview with CNN, Mark Zuckerberg remarked that “this was a major breach of trust, and [that he is] really sorry that this happened.” This led to the removal of full-page ads from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal and a promise to review the data policies of thousands of apps. However, the sheer size of Facebook’s structure and operations makes monitoring the reputation of accounts and applications unwieldy and nonoptimal. Even by doubling Facebook’s security staff from 15,000 to 28,000, an undoubtedly impressive number, each employee would still be responsible for the security of approximately 71,000 users: a truly excessive number.

Moreover, the problem of policing Facebook is exacerbated by a lack of informed consent. When users agree to take a quiz on their favorite 90’s sitcom character, many aren’t aware that their data as well as their friends’ data will be given to corporations such as Cambridge Analytica (unless they read the fine print of Facebook’s API). Moreover, the quiz can even be removed at any time and replaced with hundreds of duplicates if or when a security member flags an application. Thus, unless users take the extra effort to tediously analyze exactly which pieces of data they are allowing these firms to use, they will remain incapable of preventing exploitative attacks on their personal data and privacy.

Furthermore, even against this backdrop, the US government has yet to help users understand when their data is being collected. This is largely due to the fact that the United States remains one of the only major countries in the world lacking such a form of legislation. In 2016, Congress retracted FCC regulation that would have prevented internet service providers (ISPs) from selling data without users’ consent. Moreover, legislators have resisted taking any action against Silicon Valley, asserting that they are overly intrusive and would stifle innovation.

It is thus in the absence of government regulation that a technological revolution is necessary in order to allow people to share and connect with one another while still having the peace of mind that their personal data will remain secure and protected.

Enter the blockchain: a distributed ledger where each person can access and control who has their information, and Hub token, a system on which:

1. actual, verified accounts build reputation scores through interactions,

2. data is proprietary and only given out in specified situations, and

3. a company’s change in reputation for the worse can cause a retraction of data permissions.

Hub token was created with the goal of solving the problem of virtual trust by allowing users to assess trustworthiness at a distance across applications. Rather than having the protocol’s value come from extracting personal data as in the example of Facebook, the value of Hub’s Human Trust Protocol instead lies in the decentralization of trust and reputation building by users.

Trust is inherently built into Hub’s network, which establishes confidence by incentivizing positive interactions between its users. Reputation data is available only upon approval from the owner, allowing users to engage in the communication of confidential information in a respectful manner. Moreover, the Human Trust Protocol will allow users to access the reputation scores of other people or organizations with whom they transact online and will additionally prevent the accessing of their own information by other parties without prior permission having been given. Therefore, any disclosure of private information rests solely in the hands of the user who rightfully owns their personal data.

The Human Trust Protocol will thus promote the maintenance of trust and reputation among originally trust-less parties, build legitimacy by allowing actors to place a stake in interactions, and economically incentivizes users and organizations to engage in fair behavior online. On top of that, Hub is also dedicated to handling Sybil attacks and to continually revising its economic structure as the protocol grows.

Personal data and privacy have the potential to be of immense value to users. Yet, it will continue to be exploited in our current ecosystem as centralized companies like Facebook remain unable to resolve the serious problem of community policing. In a world where bad actors are increasingly influencing serious outcomes, decentralized organizations need to step up and create a new order that solves these problems. Hub strives to be the leading solution to this previously unsolvable problem.

With Niall Sohan and Kyle D’Souza

For more information about hubtoken.org, please read our whitepaper here.