The Joystream Manifesto
Our Manifesto units out each the issues we consider are associated with digital media platforms of their present form in addition to our proposed resolution to these concerns.
Problem
We consider that art, be it as literature, music, movie, video games or performance, is a crucial software by way of which societies set up a shared understanding of what is frequent data amongst all members. These expressions outline values and narratives that find yourself shaping tradition, faith and even public policy. It subsequently matters deeply how it’s financed, distributed and paid for.
Digital media has turn into the primary medium via which such expression is distributed, and digital media platforms have turn out to be the key establishments organizing this exercise.
Unfortunately, because of network https://www.joystream.org/ effects, economies of scale, laws and political pursuits, we’re right now left with handful of massive establishments which set the phrases for how this occurs. They are nearly entirely unaccountable to normal market and political mechanisms.
As a end result, our stories, expressions and interactions are managed and filtered on their terms. This continues to generate an ever altering set of issues, 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 get together builders.
Goal
We name for an arrangement where media platforms are accountable to the individuals they influence, which are primarily their users, be it as customers, creatives, third party developer or staff.
It is the absence of such accountability which is the fundamental supply of any explicit downside at any specific time.
Thesis
Our core thesis is that there are two fundamental challenges which must be addressed to attain this objective, and that an acceptable utility of up to date distributed methods expertise, together with blockchains, smart contracts and tokens, is the best means to take action.
The Wedge
First is the query of tips on how to create an alternate from scratch in the face of platform externalities which make any new platform almost ineffective, no matter any of its inherent traits. The means of doing this sort of bootstrapping has historically been largely an artwork, where success has not often been reproducible.
We imagine that blockchain tokens, earned by and issued to early individuals, have been proven to be extremely efficient at mobilizing, integrating and motivating a global and dynamic community.
This has now repeatedly allowed nascent communities, like the Bitcoin group, to beat the preliminary community effect hurdle. There isn’t any certainty that this will be enough, but we consider this mechanism is as promising as anything which is more likely to have a chance in a very long time.
Accountability at scale
Second is the question of how to create and sustain accountability in such a platform when it really reaches scale.
We understand there to be two elementary ways that individuals can hold institutions of any sort accountable: Voice and exit, within the tradition of Hirschman A. O.
Voice
Voice is the approach of trying to improve or reform the functioning of an institution from inside. The effectiveness of this depends on some capacity to both share dependable data with other members, and have some impact on inside governance processes. Current media platforms present users no efficient method of doing both.
We believe that blockchains present an organizational and economic infrastructure which can tackle both problems. The public, verifiable and immutable history of financial and administrative records, provides an excellent basis for users to know the present and previous state of the platform. This permits anyone to make incontestable claims about relevant information and circumstances.
Further, blockchain tokens allow us to make use and management of a platform inseparable, giving customers an automatic seat at the desk in deliberating over platform degree selections.
All that is required to determine, train or switch the capacity to take part in such exercise, is the flexibility to signal messages with identifiable cryptographic keys. Perfectly dependable contracting offers a big, dynamic and unrestricted set of users the means of governing the platform. This can serve a wide range of functions, such as undertaking initiatives, regulating participation in different formally specified roles, or even updating the institutional rules themselves. This integration of dependable contracting into the economic rails offers an organizational infrastructure rather more according to our aims of inclusive control than the traditional jurisdictional trust primarily based infrastructure.
Exit
Exit is the approach of entirely ending participation in an establishment in favor of either becoming a member of or creating an alternative. The effectiveness of this is determined by prices of leaving, and both becoming a member of or creating an alternative, all being low compared to the deprivation within the present institution. This is at present not the case.
By constructing platforms based on free open supply software, open protocols and open data — as is the case with Blockchain systems, one dramatically lowers these costs. Since users management their very own information, identification and belongings, they have a much simpler time becoming a member of new platforms, and even taking their peers with them.
Open protocols and knowledge will make multi homing interfaces plentiful, where users could not even want to switch, however as a substitute use a number of platforms concurrently, which encourages platform stage competitors.
Even extra dramatically, reliance on open source implies that all of the software capital of a platform can easily be reused, and because the entire organizational state can also be public, entire ecosystems can be forked to create new different platforms with modified insurance policies and objectives.
