The Joystream Manifesto
Our Manifesto sets out both the issues we consider are related to digital media platforms of their present kind as well as our proposed answer to those considerations.
Problem
We consider that artwork, be it as literature, music, movie, video games or efficiency, is a crucial tool via which societies set up a shared understanding of what is frequent knowledge amongst all members. These expressions outline values and narratives that end up shaping culture, faith and even public coverage. It subsequently matters deeply how it’s financed, distributed and paid for.
Digital media has turn into the primary medium through which such expression is distributed, and digital media platforms have become the important thing establishments organizing this activity.
Unfortunately, due to network https://www.joystream.org/ results, economies of scale, regulations and political pursuits, we’re at present left with handful of massive establishments which set the terms for a way this happens. They are almost totally unaccountable to normal market and political mechanisms.
As a result, our stories, expressions and interactions are managed and filtered on their terms. This continues to generate an ever changing set of problems, be it rigid monetization, censorship of controversial speech, inequitable sharing of gains with creators and audience, low platform innovation or lack of credibility with third party developers.
Goal
We call for an arrangement the place media platforms are accountable to the individuals they impression, which are primarily their customers, be it as consumers, creatives, third get together developer or employees.
It is the absence of such accountability which is the fundamental supply of any specific drawback at any specific time.
Thesis
Our core thesis is that there are two basic challenges which must be addressed to achieve this goal, and that an acceptable application of contemporary distributed systems expertise, together with blockchains, sensible contracts and tokens, is the proper means to do so.
The Wedge
First is the question of how to create an alternative from scratch within the face of platform externalities which make any new platform practically useless, no matter any of its inherent characteristics. The means of doing this type of bootstrapping has traditionally been mostly an artwork, the place success has rarely been reproducible.
We believe that blockchain tokens, earned by and issued to early members, have been shown to be extraordinarily efficient at mobilizing, integrating and motivating a world and dynamic neighborhood.
This has now repeatedly allowed nascent communities, just like the Bitcoin neighborhood, to beat the initial community impact hurdle. There is no certainty that this will be enough, but we imagine this mechanism is as promising as something which is more likely to have an opportunity in a long time.
Accountability at scale
Second is the query of tips on how to create and sustain accountability in such a platform when it actually reaches scale.
We perceive there to be two basic ways in which participants can hold establishments of any kind accountable: Voice and exit, within the custom of Hirschman A. O.
Voice
Voice is the method of making an attempt to improve or reform the functioning of an institution from inside. The effectiveness of this is dependent upon some capability to both share reliable info with other members, and have some influence on inner governance processes. Current media platforms provide users no efficient way of doing both.
We imagine that blockchains provide an organizational and economic infrastructure which might handle each issues. The public, verifiable and immutable history of economic and administrative information, supplies a superb basis for customers to know the current and past state of the platform. This permits anyone to make incontestable claims about relevant details and circumstances.
Further, blockchain tokens enable us to make use and management of a platform inseparable, giving customers an computerized seat at the desk in deliberating over platform degree choices.
All that’s required to determine, train or switch the capacity to take part in such activity, is the power to signal messages with identifiable cryptographic keys. Perfectly reliable contracting provides a big, dynamic and unrestricted set of users the technique of governing the platform. This can serve a variety of functions, similar to enterprise tasks, regulating participation in several formally specified roles, and even updating the institutional guidelines themselves. This integration of dependable contracting into the economic rails supplies an organizational infrastructure much more consistent with our objectives of inclusive control than the conventional jurisdictional trust based mostly infrastructure.
Exit
Exit is the approach of totally ending participation in an institution in favor of either becoming a member of or creating another. The effectiveness of this depends on prices of leaving, and either becoming a member of or creating an alternate, all being low compared to the deprivation within the current institution. This is at present not the case.
By building platforms primarily based on free open supply software, open protocols and open information — as is the case with Blockchain methods, one dramatically lowers these prices. Since customers control their own knowledge, identification and property, they’ve a much easier time becoming a member of new platforms, and even taking their peers with them.
Open protocols and knowledge will make multi homing interfaces abundant, where users could not even need to modify, but as an alternative use multiple platforms concurrently, which inspires platform degree competition.
Even extra dramatically, reliance on open supply means that all the software program capital of a platform can simply be reused, and for the reason that whole organizational state is also public, complete ecosystems can be forked to create new different platforms with modified policies and aims.
