The Promise of Web3: Can It Address Reddit’s Escalating Social Platform Problems?

Starting July this year, Reddit’s parent company, New York-based Advance Publications, introduced a new policy that will charge third-party apps to access data on the social media platform. This led to thousands of Reddit discussion forums going dark in protest, with nearly 9,000 subreddits participating in the protest including forums with tens of millions of users such as r/videos, and r/music. The policy is a part of the wider changes that Reddit is implementing on its APIs, which brings fears about content moderation and accessibility on the platform.

While the company has confirmed that the fees will only apply to forums with a large enough userbase, opposers of the policy say the changes threaten how moderators have historically customized their platforms – which rely on volunteer moderators. Moderators often use third-party tools to help them moderate their subreddits, securing them from spam, hateful and offensive content and accessibility.

The Enigmatic Descent: Unraveling the Mysteries of Reddit’s Gradual Decline

Reddit faces the issue of lack of rewards. As a Fortune article reads, moderators are not paid and, hence have no incentive to keep the subreddits safe for followers. As such, mods build a power trip while controlling their forums, which could lead to discriminative banning or removal of posts – especially from unprofessional moderators. I don’t agree with you, I ban you.

Notwithstanding, Reddit’s ‘karma’ system has proven time and time again to be an archaic system that reduces the quality of user experience on the platform. While the upvoting/downvoting system can be important in improving conversations on the platform, if used correctly, many people will downvote your comment, post or content if they don’t agree with you – not because you are not adding to the conversation. This enables other users to be able to control your content and overall experience on the platform, which makes the system unbalanced and unfair for most.

These issues are compounding the decrease in users, with the total number of visits to the site sharply dropping 23% in the month of September 2023 – losing over 400 million monthly visits, as SimilarWeb data shows.

While Web 2 social platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok offer a sensible option from Reddit, they face the same centralization, accessibility and censorship conundrums that Reddit does. Luckily, developers and users are turning to better social network solutions – mainly Web 3-based social networks. Despite the Web 3 social platforms industry being in its early stages of development, with no mass adoption, the ecosystem can move very quickly once a company hits genuine virality.

Several such companies are building solutions to improve the Web 2 social media industry and offer key values that improve social interaction on the Internet. Phaver,  a social media platform powered by social graph protocols Lens Protocol and CyberConnect, is a leader in this field – combining the power of blockchain to introduce the decentralized, secure, and incentivization qualities of Web 3 to traditional social media.

A Look at How Blockchain Could Transform Reddit’s Social Dynamics

Blockchain technology has proven a solution for many industries across global industries from finance, supply chain, healthcare, art, asset management and more industries. In a similar breath, Web 3 developers are creating solutions in the social media realm. The decentralization, transparency, data ownership, and non-censorship properties make it a top choice for social media companies to bring back trust to their users.

Phaver introduces a multi-protocol platform that allows users to build their social platform on several blockchains, removing the need for early protocols to bet on a winner early. This means they can build their platform with wider coverage and convenience once full support has been rolled out. Unlike Reddit, where the company introduced new API policies, blockchain technology gives users the power to control their accounts as they see fit, protecting them from any centralized actions.

Additionally, Phaver introduces a reputation system (Phaver Cred), like Reddit’s karma system, which is a proprietary way to gamify building a reputation on social media. Initially, the score is a factor of daily activity and wallet assets, primarily NFTs, which protect against multi-accounting and botting. The Cred system also uses engagement statistics from other genuine accounts or high-cred profiles to reward active users. The rewards can then be redeemed into tokens (once launched) on their marketplace.

It also offers a massive opportunity for incentivizing professional creators and unhappy Reddit mods via its gamified rewards. As creators make the platform more entertaining and moderators keep it safe, the social media feeds will be more relevant for users looking to consume content. As the number of users rises, the platform can leverage this additional time spent on the platform to sell ads, or explicitly sell content to the users. This provides a system where nobody can rug the API and rewards are actually worth money vs. likes or Karma, while the average user can be encouraged to use Phaver more actively by gamifying the content discovery and curation.

A Clearer Future for Social Media in Web 3

For a couple of years, several social media developers have tried to transition their platforms into the Web 3 space but with no success. However, with the compounding issues across the Web 2 social media industry, users are asking for better platforms with valuable engagement rewards. The rise of social media platforms on Web 3 is making a comeback with platforms solving persistent centralization, privacy, and incentivization issues.