Sphere- Decentralized Social Network

This is my review of Sphere Social. Which is at https://sphere.social

Summary: Token. Weak ethic. NOT decentralized.

The good:

• Token can be exchange for services within Sphere Social (SS). In the unlikely event that it’s successful. I do not trust and will not invest in SS though.

The bad:

• Sphere Social (SS) is NOT really fully decentralized. They try to fool you into believing that they are decentralized. To do so they use the popular word “decentralized” all over their whitepaper. In fact SS is mostly CENTRALIZED. They claim that they are decentralized because they offer reward tokens. Which they call Social Activity Tokens (SAT). Tokens are not to confuse with a full decentralized Social Network. Sorry but those are two different things. Read on for other red flags. In other words, SS are misleading and deceiving you. This shows they have a weak ethic. When most users figure this out the value of their token will crash and users will leave. To the benefit of really decentralized Social Network. Such as https://DiasporaFoundation.org or https://Minds.com

• NOT distributed. And NOT federated. Read more about the definition of distributed and federated networks at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_(information_technology)

• Sphere tried to mislead you and deceive you into beleiving that blockchain and distributed storage are the same thing. Extract from Sphere whitepaper v1.7.4 on page 19: “a decentralized social media platform that stores multimedia and other data on a secured blockchain rather than on traditional servers.” Source at https://sphere.social/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Sphere_Whitepaper_v1.7.4.pdf

Their claim is unethical because by definition a “blockchain” is a cryptographically secured ledger that can be permissionless and decentralized. A blockchain is NOT to confuse with a distributed storage of social multimedia and other data. In Sphere's claim above, notice that they tried to mislead you and deceive you into believing that "blockchain" and "distributed storage" are the same thing. They are not.

The above is one of the many unethical claims in the Sphere whitepaper. Did you spot the other unethical claims?

An ethical claim would be: “Sphere stores multimedia and other data on a secured decentralized storage rather than on traditional secured centralized storage. And store its SAT tokens in on a secured blockchain.” Assuming that those are their real intentions.

Maybe the Sphere founders are not familiar with the most widely recognized definition of blockchain? For investors, buyers, and users interested to not getting scam by unethical abuse of words such as “blockchain”, “decentralized”, “cryptocurrency”, “token”, a good start is to educate yourself. For example Corbett Report did an informative video about the nuances in the jargon. Very good to watch. They are good and bad crypto currencies. Educate yourself to not get scam by the bad ones. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkhUn7nh33Q

• Potentially NOT secure. Because the code is not available publicly. So it can not be review by the public. In other words, there is a risk of abuse. The software code is NOT open source. So weak security. And high risk of abuse by people with immature behaviors. Compare to https://DiasporaFoundation.org or https://Minds.com code which are open source and can be review by all.

• Owned by the for-profit corporation Sphere Network LTD. Which was recently created on 13 September 2017. With correspondence address at Otonomos (Uk) Ltd, 1 Fore Street, London, United Kingdom, EC2Y 9DT.

According to legal records, this for-profit corporation is controlled by only two people. They are Mr Andrew Khong and Mr Tuong Pham. 25 to 50% each. Both are residents of the USA. Source at https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10961486

SS advertised that you are 100% in control of your content. That's false. As stated above, only two people have full controls of all your SS content, including censorship. Others have limited and partial decision-making control over your content.

This means that SS is primarily Money-Servant. Not People-Servant. In other words, Sphere is not owned by a not-for-profit community. Usually a corporation first priority is to hoard money. Not serve you and protect your privacy.

• Bad choice of name. Because there is already a Sphere Social network. That's gonna create confusion. The other network was founded in 2008 http://www.the-sphere.com

Wiki page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sphere_(social_network)

• Their primary front-end website at https://sphere.social seems to be partly powered by Wordpress. As you know SS back-end software is NOT open source. But SS use the open source project Wordpress for their primary front-end website. And do NOT give credit to the Wordpress community. SS's behaviors are awkward and self-centered.

• Not friendly with United States and Singapore citizens. If you try to register they greet you with a email asking you to confirm that you’re not a citizen from those countries. Source at https://www.minds.com/media/803754670359556096
So the two owners of SS are citizens of USA, but they do not welcome other citizens of USA to use SS. That is really suspicious.

• Weak ethic. Because they tried to fool their user into believing that they are decentralized. This is false. They are primarily centralized.

How to not get scam?

A good start is to educate yourself. For example Corbett Report did an informative video about the nuances in the jargon. Such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralize. Very good to watch. They are good and bad crypto currencies. Educate yourself to not get scam by the bad ones. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkhUn7nh33Q

I wrote my review as a volunteer. Which was not paid by Minds, Diaspora, or anyone.

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Are your tired of censorship with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter? You might be interested in the censorship-free and open source Minds at https://www.minds.com/register;referrer=Francewhoa