The new project of Mark Zuckerberg’s company seeks to become an alternative to Twitter.
Meta Platforms Inc, the owner of Facebook, announced this week that it plans to soon launch a new standalone decentralized social network, which will allow sharing text updates just like Twitter, Moneycontrol.com reported.
A company spokesperson quoted by the Indian business news site confirmed the information, clearing up speculation about the project. The company sees this as an “opportunity” for both creators and public figures to share updates related to their tastes and interests.
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which are centralized platforms overseen by the company itself, the new decentralized social network would be managed by volunteer users, who would join together to form a federation of applications linked to their respective networks.
A more secure social network for storing data
Decentralized social networks are a very special type of decentralized applications (DApps). They are powered by smart contracts that are deployed on the blockchain. Using contract code, the backend of these applications is established by defining their business logic.
The backend is a corporate system that supports “Back Office” applications and is used to run a website or company. This system collects information from users and allows the correct functioning of the site when processing orders or supplies, for example.
The main advantages of decentralized applications over centralized ones are that they are more secure, less vulnerable and based on free software. In addition to the differences in the backend, DApps offer greater security for data storage.
Meta’s new content application seeks to compete with Twitter, Moneycontrol.com said. It further explained that the networking platform would be compatible with ActivityPub, the decentralized code network protocol used by Mastodon, the German microblogging competitor, and other applications.
Citing sources, the website noted that the developer of the project, codenamed P92, is Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri. Instagram users would be able to access the app directly using their login details.
