March 24, 2021
In the news: Nikhil Raghuveera on decentralized technology to protect democracy
Nikhil Raghuveera, Nonresident Fellow at the GeoTech Center, recently published an an op-ed for Cointelegraph in which he argues that adopting decentralized technology, alongside sensible privacy regulations, to protect democracies around the globe is imperative. The current status quo, defined by centralized technology platforms, is untenable: these platforms “enable people to communicate harmful and violent content to a wide audience, and that are based on a business model that directs billions of dollars to magnify content through targeted curation.”
By contrast, Mr. Raghuveera argues that decentralized and peer-to-peer (P2P) technology platforms have different incentives. By valuing privacy over content curation, democracy-eroding forces like misinformation and hate speech are less likely to spread on these platforms. That is not to say that harmful content does not exist on decentralized and P2P platforms. Rather, the outreach of such content “is more limited and focused.” Alongside content moderation policy, decision makers must come to view decentralized and P2P platforms for what they are–“new technical designs that do not endanger democracy.”
Read the whole article at the link below.