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Dr Hamid Khobzi

Expert Insights

As of 2024, hundreds of millions of people are creating content on social media platforms. Between 2020 and 2022, Adobe reports that the online creator industry grew by more than 50%. However, the platforms we know and love like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are not without their challenges for creators.

New research by University of Sussex Business School and CITEX, a centralised cryptocurrency exchange platform, explores an alternative option: decentralised social media. We spoke with lead author, Dr Hamid Khobzi, Lecturer in Information Systems, to find out more.

Lifting the lid on social media platforms

We may take popular platforms like Facebook and X for granted, enjoying content without considering their behind the scenes functions. Social media as we mostly know it is controlled centrally by the platform owner, or ‘centralised’. Platform owners make important decisions about how they run and have access to user data, all stored in central databases.

Central owners can make a lot of across the board decisions that aren’t necessarily in favour of content creators, impacting their motivation to create, earnings and even mental health. Users of platforms may also relate to this, for example, many left Twitter (now X) following Elon Musk’s takeover with some moving to decentralized platforms like Mastodon and Blue Sky Social instead.

Major problems facing creators

New research by Hamid and team looks at three major problems that many creators deal with on centralised social media (or CSM), relating to: monetization, content moderation and privacy.

For the novice or average creator, it can take a long time before they profit from their content as they need to meet certain requirements to be eligible. For example, YouTube’s partnership programme requires 1000 subscribers with either 4000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views. As a result, it can take an average of 5 months before they see their first dollar.

On CSM, companies can use algorithms and human agents to moderate content, reviewing material that’s flagged as unsuitable. Although this does help to protect users, it can also negatively impact some creators who are punished by algorithmic bias.

Dr Hamid Khobzi said: "Research has found that creators from marginalised groups, like the LGTBQIA+ community or people of colour, have experienced unfair moderation when sharing content about their experience, despite following platform terms of service."

Privacy and security is another key issue for creators as high visibility and online fame increases their risk. One example is serial swatting where creators’ addresses are leaked and falsely reported to law enforcement with swat teams being sent to their residence as a result, including during livestreams.

hese three issues can negatively affect many creators, impacting their livelihoods and mental health. Social media platforms that function in a different way do exist, so can they offer a solution?

Breaking down decentralised social media

Unlike CSM, decentralised social media (DSM) platforms have no central authority deciding how the platform works, and there’s no central database storing user data. Instead they’re organized in a distributed fashion across multiple servers.

Their research explores two main types of DSM: federated and blockchain-based. The main example of federated DSM is the Fediverse, enabling users to communicate with each other across different federated servers using one account.

Video sharing platforms like DTube, similar to Youtube, are created on blockchain technology. The data is distributed throughout numerous linked blocks rather than sitting in one central space. Each platform has its own native cryptocurrency to reward creators with so there’s possibility to gain money sooner. Like start-ups, there are many individual types of platforms that emerge in DSM and some survive and gain traction.

Although CSM reigns supreme in terms of popularity, DSM offers new opportunities for content creators and can sidestep some of the issues described above. For example, although earnings may be minimal, creators can cash out from an early stage on blockchain-based DSM and this could be a motivating factor to continue pursuing content creation.

Creators could avoid unfair censorship of content by finding a federated DSM platform with an agreeable moderation policy – some are even developed with users input in a more democratic way. People can also create their own server and set the policy themselves. It’s a similar story for blockchain DSM where content moderation is more of a community-oriented activity with users’ votes determining the legality of content. Once content is on the blockchain, it lives there forever and this impossibility of removing content could deter people from illegal or inappropriate activity.

And what about privacy? Both types of DSM can be more secure than popular CSM platforms due to their distributed data storage – without a centralized database, it’s not so straightforward to breach.

Dr Hamid Khobzi added: "I think the most interesting aspect about decentralised social media platforms is that it has the opportunity for content creators to become the stakeholders of the platform."

Getting started with decentralised social media

Knowing where to start with approaching DSM may be overwhelming. In their new paper, Hamid and team suggest creators use both CSM and DSM platforms in a “parallel operation”.

Creators “need to have a good understanding about each category first and then assess these characteristics to see which one suits them better”. Then the creator can operate across both types “to compensate the shortcomings that they experience on centralised social media platforms”.

Learn more about this topic with "Content creators at a crossroads with decentralised social media".

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