It is no secret that that the vast centralized information silos of Google and Facebook have scooped up a very large share of all of the net value that has so far accrued to internet companies. There is real pushback developing against this, however. Recently, Edward Snowden said that Facebook wasn't a social media company, but a surveillance company. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is making this observation widely known. Centralization of information is a major problem.
In what I take to be a very astonishing development, the cofounder of WhatsApp, a messaging service that was sold to Facebook for $19 billion, has told his Twitter followers to delete Facebook.
The centralization of so much personal data and the incentive this gives to Facebook to exploit that data highlights the risk of centralization. Perhaps we are reaching a tipping point on this front. The embrace of decentralization is coming. ASICS, cryptography, software and blockchain make real decentralization possible for the first time. I doubt that will be bad for bitcoin.
Disclosure: This is not investment advice.
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