The Joystream Manifesto

Our Manifesto sets out both the issues we imagine are related to digital media platforms in their current kind as well as our proposed answer to these issues.

Problem

We imagine that art, be it as literature, music, movie, games or performance, is a critical tool via which societies set up a shared understanding of what’s frequent knowledge amongst all members. These expressions outline values and narratives that end up shaping culture, faith and even public policy. It due to this fact matters deeply how it’s financed, distributed and paid for.

Digital media has turn into the first medium through which such expression is distributed, and digital media platforms have turn into the key institutions organizing this activity.

Unfortunately, because of network https://www.joystream.org/ results, economies of scale, regulations and political interests, we’re at present left with handful of huge establishments which set the phrases for a way this happens. They are almost completely unaccountable to regular market and political mechanisms.

As a result, our stories, expressions and interactions are managed and filtered on their phrases. This continues to generate an ever altering set of issues, be it rigid monetization, censorship of controversial speech, inequitable sharing of features with creators and audience, low platform innovation or lack of credibility with third celebration builders.

Goal

We name for an arrangement the place media platforms are accountable to the folks they impact, which are primarily their customers, be it as customers, creatives, third party developer or staff.

It is the absence of such accountability which is the elemental supply of any explicit downside at any explicit time.

Thesis

Our core thesis is that there are two primary challenges which should be addressed to achieve this aim, and that an appropriate software of latest distributed systems technology, together with blockchains, smart contracts and tokens, is the proper 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, no matter any of its inherent characteristics. The means of doing this kind of bootstrapping has historically been mostly an artwork, where success has hardly ever been reproducible.

We imagine that blockchain tokens, earned by and issued to early members, have been proven to be extremely effective at mobilizing, integrating and motivating a global and dynamic neighborhood.

This has now repeatedly allowed nascent communities, just like the Bitcoin neighborhood, to overcome the preliminary network impact hurdle. There is not any certainty that this shall be enough, however we believe this mechanism is as promising as anything which is likely to have an opportunity in a long time.

Accountability at scale

Second is the question of how to create and maintain accountability in such a platform when it actually reaches scale.

We understand there to be two basic ways that participants can maintain establishments of any sort accountable: Voice and exit, within the custom of Hirschman A. O.

Voice

Voice is the strategy of attempting to enhance or reform the functioning of an institution from within. The effectiveness of this depends on some capability to both share dependable data with other members, and have some impact on inner governance processes. Current media platforms present users no efficient method of doing either.

We believe that blockchains provide an organizational and financial infrastructure which may handle both problems. The public, verifiable and immutable history of financial and administrative information, supplies a superb basis for users to grasp the current and previous state of the platform. This allows anybody to make incontestable claims about relevant information and circumstances.

Further, blockchain tokens enable us to make use and management of a platform inseparable, giving customers an computerized seat on the table in deliberating over platform stage decisions.

All that is required to ascertain, train or transfer the capacity to participate in such exercise, is the ability to sign messages with identifiable cryptographic keys. Perfectly reliable contracting offers a big, dynamic and unrestricted set of customers the means of governing the platform. This can serve a variety of purposes, such as endeavor projects, regulating participation in several formally specified roles, and even updating the institutional rules themselves. This integration of dependable contracting into the financial rails provides an organizational infrastructure rather more according to our objectives of inclusive management than the traditional jurisdictional belief based mostly infrastructure.

Exit

Exit is the approach of totally ending participation in an institution 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 an alternative, all being low compared to the deprivation within the present institution. This is presently not the case.

By building platforms based on free open source software, open protocols and open information — as is the case with Blockchain methods, one dramatically lowers these prices. Since users management their own information, id and belongings, they’ve a a lot simpler time becoming a member of new platforms, and even taking their peers with them.

Open protocols and data will make multi homing interfaces ample, where users could not even want to switch, but instead use multiple platforms concurrently, which inspires platform degree competitors.

Even extra dramatically, reliance on open source implies that all the software program capital of a platform can easily be reused, and for the reason that complete organizational state can also be public, entire ecosystems could be forked to create new different platforms with modified policies and objectives.