Governance and Incentive Systems of Blockchain-Based Social Networks
* Article: The Common Factory: Governance and Incentive Systems of Blockchain-based Social Networks. By Felix Fritsch. Conference Paper, June 2019
CSC 2019 – 15th International Conference on Sociocybernetics Urbino, Italy – 25-29 June 2019 ; “Dark Ages 2.0”: Social Media And Their Impact Paper No. #43
Abstract:
Blockchain architecture provides robust institutional infrastructure for distributed networks that fundamentally changes the ways groups organize online. Its applications go beyond existing digital commerce to commodify and transform social relations through tokenization, incentivization and rationalization. Crypto Social Networks promising to reward users financially for valuable contributions constitute a paragon of such subsumption through blockchain. These platforms organize value distribution among users along affective metrics and introduce various mechanisms that facilitate autonomous group governance. Their emergence both acknowledges the critique issued by digital labour scholars of hitherto exploitative platform-user relations and challenges their uncritical appliance of time-based labour theory of value to the digital realm.
Beyond simple commodification, blockchains and the code they operate are discussed as emerging public infrastructure for the transaction of private assets and the decentralized organization of groups – as digital commons facilitating the total subsumption of sociality under abstract capital. While blockchain is inherently commodified and constitutes the capstone of a digital ‚social factory‘, the specific alignment of token design, incentive systems and other governance mechanisms can lead to vastly different outcomes in power and revenue distribution. The empirical section is devoted to highlighting these differences through analysis of three emerging platforms Minds, Steem and HyperSpace along their token, incentive and governance systems. While the findings underline the devil in the details especially of tokenomics, they also show the immatureness of existing platforms, which finds expression in different blind spots depending on the distinct means and aims of each project."