On July 15, 2020, Twitter got hacked. The hackers gained access to a swath of high-profile individuals’ accounts like Elon Musk and Joe Biden, and used that access to scam other users into handing over bitcoin. Having coincidentally written about decentralized social media the day before the hack, I thought it would be a good idea to further break down what decentralization means.
Presenting ourselves to the world comes with inherent risk. With every piece of ourselves we share online, we risk compromising our personal privacy and security. We show our faces, share our feelings, and sometimes engage in difficult discussions. The beauty of social media is that the global community can, for the first time in history, engage in the same discussion all at once. The new connections we make and old ones we maintain through social media more often than not outweigh the risk. Yet, scrutiny and periodic reevaluation of the platforms we use to share our lives is vital to maintaining an open and trusted medium of communication. If the last decade has taught us anything, it's that social media platforms of yore are no longer providing a beneficial service that outweighs the immense damage they've caused to our privacy.