The next Reddit could be based on bitcoin and impossible to censor
But there's another, far more radical vision for Reddit (or a site just like it): A decentralised, bitcoin-powered community that is impossible to shut down, impossible to censor.
It's the free speech advocate's dream - and it's not as unrealistic as you might think.
Similar projects are already thriving, and two new blog posts published on Sunday have made clear just how close we already are.
Bitcoin, meet Reddit
First we have Fred Wilson, a prominent venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures. Wilson suggests taking one of the underlying principles of bitcoin - the blockchain - and applying to Reddit. The blockchain, if you're unfamiliar with it, is a decentralised ledger that stores every transaction made on the bitcoin network. It means there is no need for a central bank to keep a record of who's spending what, because everyone has the record. It also means that because everyone has a copy, it is all but impossible to censor.
Apply that principle to Reddit and it gives you a community, collectively powered by its users, that is impossible to censor. It's the techno-libertarian dream of effectively limitless free speech.
Many of Reddit's recent woes have come from the tensions that have risen between the site's support of free speech, and the reality of having to police a website for abusive, offensive, or illegal content. (Many users were outraged when the site banned r/FatPeopleHate, a community dedicated to - you guessed it! - hating fat people.)Wilson suggests that, actually, "it may be that there is no viable middle ground between a centrally controlled media platform and an entirely decentralized media platform. You are either going to police the site or you are going to build something that cannot be policed even if you want to."
This isn't just a thought experiment
Decentralised networks are far closer than you realise
As such, OpenBazaar faces all the same challenges that any decentralised media platform would. How do you tackle harassment, or slander, or deceit? How do you deal with objectionable content? How do you persuade people to contribute processing power to the upkeep of a network that will, in all likelihood, be used to help facilitate illegal activity?
Hoffman's argument is that as OpenBazaar is a protocol (like BitTorrent), rather than a centralised entity (like the Pirate Bay), its developers can't be held liable for what takes place on it - the same argument the creators of a decentralised Reddit would likely use to wash their hands of illegal content.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hoffman told Business Insider that he thinks Wilson is "super on point with this analysis I think."
The developer recommends some caution: "Being both a huge Twitter and Reddit fan I certainly think building a decentralized media company is intriguing but harder than it looks. You kind of saw the difficulty with attempts like Diaspora [an earlier decentralised social network] that never really took off. Projects like OpenBazaar and others are feverishly working to unbundle those types of businesses to push profit generation to the edges rather than by charging a toll with ads or fees in the center.
"The blockchain and decentralized databases enable us to do so and those offerings are improving every day."