The Joystream Manifesto
Our Manifesto units out both the issues we believe are associated with digital media platforms of their present type as well as our proposed solution to these considerations.
Problem
We believe that artwork, be it as literature, music, movie, games or performance, is a important tool through which societies set up a shared understanding of what is common data amongst all members. These expressions outline values and narratives that end up shaping tradition, faith and even public coverage. It subsequently issues deeply how it is financed, distributed and paid for.
Digital media has turn out to be the first medium by way of which such expression is distributed, and digital media platforms have turn into the key establishments organizing this exercise.
Unfortunately, as a result of network https://www.joystream.org/ effects, economies of scale, rules and political pursuits, we are today left with handful of large institutions which set the phrases for how this happens. They are nearly completely unaccountable to normal market and political mechanisms.
As a outcome, our tales, 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 viewers, low platform innovation or lack of credibility with third get together developers.
Goal
We name for an association where media platforms are accountable to the individuals they influence, which are primarily their customers, be it as shoppers, creatives, third celebration developer or staff.
It is the absence of such accountability which is the basic supply of any explicit downside at any particular time.
Thesis
Our core thesis is that there are two basic challenges which have to be addressed to attain this objective, and that an acceptable utility of contemporary distributed systems technology, including blockchains, good contracts and tokens, is the best means to take action.
The Wedge
First is the question of tips on how to create another from scratch within the face of platform externalities which make any new platform nearly useless, regardless of any of its inherent characteristics. The means of doing this sort of bootstrapping has historically been largely an art, where success has rarely been reproducible.
We imagine that blockchain tokens, earned by and issued to early members, have been shown to be extremely effective at mobilizing, integrating and motivating an international and dynamic group.
This has now repeatedly allowed nascent communities, like the Bitcoin group, to beat the preliminary community impact hurdle. There is no certainty that this shall be adequate, but we consider this mechanism is as promising as something which is likely to have a chance in a long time.
Accountability at scale
Second is the query of tips on how to create and maintain accountability in such a platform when it truly reaches scale.
We understand there to be two basic ways that individuals can hold establishments of any sort accountable: Voice and exit, in the custom of Hirschman A. O.
Voice
Voice is the strategy of trying to enhance or reform the functioning of an establishment from inside. The effectiveness of this depends on some capacity to each share reliable information with other members, and have some impact on inside governance processes. Current media platforms present customers no efficient means of doing both.
We imagine that blockchains provide an organizational and financial infrastructure which can address each problems. The public, verifiable and immutable history of economic and administrative data, supplies an excellent foundation for users to know the present and previous state of the platform. This permits anybody 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 table in deliberating over platform degree decisions.
All that’s required to determine, train or switch the capability to take part in such exercise, is the flexibility to sign messages with identifiable cryptographic keys. Perfectly reliable contracting gives a big, dynamic and unrestricted set of users the means of governing the platform. This can serve a wide range of purposes, similar to enterprise tasks, regulating participation in different formally specified roles, or even updating the institutional rules themselves. This integration of reliable contracting into the economic rails supplies an organizational infrastructure rather more in line with our aims of inclusive management than the traditional jurisdictional belief based mostly infrastructure.
Exit
Exit is the strategy of completely ending participation in an establishment in favor of both becoming a member of or creating an alternative. The effectiveness of this depends on costs of leaving, and both joining or creating another, all being low in comparison with the deprivation within the present institution. This is presently not the case.
By constructing platforms primarily based on free open source software program, open protocols and open knowledge — as is the case with Blockchain systems, one dramatically lowers these prices. Since customers control their own information, id and property, they’ve a much easier time becoming a member of new platforms, and even taking their friends with them.
Open protocols and data will make multi homing interfaces abundant, the place users might not even need to switch, but as a substitute use multiple platforms concurrently, which inspires platform degree competitors.
Even more dramatically, reliance on open supply implies that all the software program capital of a platform can simply be reused, and since the whole organizational state is also public, entire ecosystems can be forked to create new various platforms with modified insurance policies and objectives.