Hive Accounts: Protecting Your Digital Life

We all know the issues with the traditional social media companies. One of the biggest is the ability to close an account on a moment's notice. At present, people are underestimating exactly how crucial that is.

For the vast percentage of people who find themselves in this position, it is a major pain in the rear. Often, there is some type of business tied to the social media account, meaning that years of work vanish instantly. All posts that were carefully put together are wiped out with the click of a mouse.

Some realize the magnitude of the power this is giving social media companies. This is, however, really just the beginning.

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In this article we will explore how this is only going to become more vital as we progress forward with technology.

Facebook And Virtual Reality

Most of us heard about Oculus™. This is the leading Virtual Reality headset. What many do not know is that it is owned by Facebook, having purchased it back 6 or 7 years ago.

At this moment, the headset is the most cost effective as well as advanced on the market. Many theorize that Facebook is subsidizing the cost, taking a loss on each headset sold. They are doing this to get people locked into their ecosystem, something that worked very well with their main site.

To activate the headset, a Facebook account is obviously required. This is the account management system that is utilized. While it makes sense from the company's perspective, it creates a host of problems for the users.

What if one wants to delete his or her Facebook account. That is fine except the headset no longer works. Again, one needs an active Facebook account to use the product.

Yet this even goes one step further. Part of the allure of VR is the fact that we will be able to see the combining of our real and virtual worlds. With NFTs, we should be able to acquire different assets as we enter the different realm. As we are learning, these could have significant monetary value.

Guess what wallet system the headset will utilize. This means that is the account goes, so do all the assets acquired.

Now we see how the account closure could potentially have monetary consequences to individuals. Imagine if one is running a business in the VR world and Facebook suddenly closes it down. There could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets wiped out in an instant.

Digital Life

As bad as that is, it can get even worse.

How would you like to be eliminated? Consider for a second the idea that you never existed. Every record of anything pertaining to you is now gone. The only way to find anything about you is based upon what others say. Even the record books are cleared of references.

In other words, you are instantly dead.

Physically, we all are going to die. When death occurred historically, the only remnants of that person's life, usually, was in the minds of others. As the ensuing generation died off, so did those memories. Hence, a few photos and entries on pages were all that was left.

When we encountered the digital world, things changed. Today, we each are creating a historical record of ourselves. Much of what we do is being recorded. Collectively, we take trillions of pictures and make billions of videos. There are text entries too numerous to count. Everyone has platforms to share their thoughts, visions, fears, and dreams.

We are also going to see the emergence of our digital lives. Notice that it is plural.

Presently, we have a "persona" online that may, or may not, mirror our physical one. People can literally become completely different personalities in the digital world. This is going to expand rapidly with the advancement of AI and VR.

When those two really take form, in the later part of this decade, we are going to be able to create many digital lives. This is going to be an important component of us. It will tap into our creativity and ability to innovate. Through the use of avatars and other breakthroughs, we will be at the point where we are "multi-person".

Some of these will be intentionally contoured while most will be accidental. Either way, they will be a part of us and have value.

Of course, here is where the problem with the likes of Facebook, and other social media companies, becomes obvious. Down the road, as we become more "digital", they have the ability to eliminate us and make it as if we never existed. When an account is erased, there goes that "person". The problem, so does everything tied to it.

Hive: Account Ownership

Hive provides a vital service to people. It provides account ownership that is exempt from getting shut down. Viewed through today's eyes of social media interaction, this is a worthwhile endeavor but hardly Earthshattering.

However, if we project ahead towards the end of this decade, we can see how this could take on much greater meaning. As we move towards the Metaverse we are going to see account protection become more important.

Essentially, Hive is not protecting one's account but, rather, one's digital life.

In other words, the footprint is always there. No matter what is put up, video, text, audio, that is preserved. Over the next few years, we are going to see new storage systems that protect all this data. Blockchain already does a wonderful job of making text immutable. This will stop the possibility of having our digital lives "killed off".

The point is we are going to move from account ownership to the owning of one's digital life. This is going to include a lot more than just keeping an individual's posts safe. There are financial ramifications which protect the assets we amass. At the same time, as we develop social relationships in this realm, those can be ongoing without permission from Facebook or any other entity.

Finally, there is a biological, real world aspect to consider. We are already seeing the different "worlds" merging. More of our everyday lives are online. If we are under the management system of a major social media company, they we are at risk of not receiving medicine or having one of our medical devices upgraded. Again, if they close an account, all that is tied to it stops working.

As the Internet becomes spatial, this is something to consider. Hive is presenting an account management system which puts the ownership and control in the hands of the individual. Since it cannot be closed down, all the scenarios mentioned in this article cannot take place.

Right now owning your account isn't the biggest deal in the world. However, over the next decade it will take on much greater importance. It is crucial that we realize it will not be about protecting our account but our digital life.


If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.

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Bang, I did it again... I just rehived your post!
Week 63 of my contest just started...you can now check the winners of the previous week!
!BEER
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Sorry, out of BEER, please retry later...

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How about this: transfering our hive account to maybe a next of kin or a loved one while having them maintain our decentralized digital legacy. Meaning we can live forever through things we have been able to accomplish digitally.

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Well if you pass the key along, then it is transferred. The one with the keys control the account.

So year, through one's kin, things can keep going. Now I am not sure there will be any consciousness there but that is a much bigger discussion that people a lot smarter than me have not been able to figure out.

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(Edited)

Well consciousness in the sense that one lives on through their contents and the impact they've made, a lot of contents and valuable cannot be kept in a place like facebook but if one's Contents can live on forever in a blockchain like hive, its like having them alive again. Take for instant if Albert Eisten had a hive account, being opportuned to see his research would feel like having him alive despite the fact that he is dead.

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I once thought about this and this is extremely possible. As long as you keep your keys safe and protected, you can do it. As a matter of fact you can write it in your WILL lol


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I've thought it would be cool to have a HIVE tribe where terminally ill patients could blog or livestream about their lives and wisdom, with the idea that crypto earned on their posts goes towards their next of kin/charitable causes.

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This is actually not a bad idea, I believe these knowledge can be shared with the community

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I can really relate to the last part of this post. I know when I first started on Hive three years ago I was trying to do my best to keep my personal life separate from my life on here. Then as I started writing more and more posts the lines got pretty blurred. It was hard to keep that part of my life off the blockchain. Thankfully I chose to take that step on Hive and not something like Facebook...

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Facebook can wipe your existence away in a heartbeat. So call all the other centralized platforms.

It is why I feel Hive is so valuable and really is an underappreciated concept.

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That makes sense to me. It is pretty rare that I use FB much anymore. Pretty much only for family stuff.

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Youtube screwed me over this way. They closed my account for "copyright strikes" or some such nonsense because of some videos I posted from a renfair that happened to have music in the background. As if someone is going to pirate music from someone's amateur video. I wouldn't have had any problem removing the videos in question but no, i was never given the opportunity. Everything was just deleted. I didn't do anything "professional" with youtube, using it mostly as a means to share videos with friends and family though many videos were public as well. There were thousands of videos that I had spent too many hours to count uploading over the years...

Anyway, I always keep copies of my own stuff so it was more of a massive inconvenience than a painful loss. I feel sorry for people that don't keep their own backups though. If I had truly lost all that video it would have been devastating.

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Some realize the magnitude of the power this is giving social media companies. This is, however, really just the beginning.

With yesterdays court decision to throw out the FTC's antitrust lawsuit, this statement is more true than ever!

I can't help but think we're at a tipping point of full digital domination. Glad we are here, utilizing blockchain to be a little more in control of our data and social media accounts.

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Why do I feel like our accounts won't really of being formed by keys but by own our biological information or something? At least with the digital world, I am wondering will our HIVE account even be linked to it?

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Can a DNA sequence be used as a key?
Should it?

Really gets the noggin joggin

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Maybe but who knows what the future has in store. If it does, our privacy would be long gone.

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What if one wants to delete his or her Facebook account. That is fine except the headset no longer works. Again, one needs an active Facebook account to use the product.

What!? Isn’t this just ridiculous lol!

Hive offers us so many novel things that are too early to be appreciated, along the line we will begin to realize these things.

Interesting post Tasky

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I was never tempted to join other social media platforms and only have twitter because of Hive users begging lol. Hive is just a class above everything else and don't see it in the same light. I can imagine what it must feel like to be cancelled on one of the other centralised apps and that can never happen here.

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Good point about centralised vs decentralised Social Media.
In my case, I got a down motivation to participate every day since months ago after a Spammer issue.
After that issue, there are still some things that don't finish to allow me to use my account as before.
For example, when I arrive to post on Leofinance it cannot be read in my Hive account. But sometimes I just lost time writing to realise and the end I cannot publish... At Hive, I did not be able to post...
I am trying to push myself to be more active, but I feel like if I don't understand what is happening I should not continue... Maybe I should study about programming?? It is so frustrating to see I cannot use my accounts as before. Also I cannot understand how can someone damage one account just with spamming.
In the mean time, I am using PeakD to post.

Sorry to bother you about my frustration on my Hive/Leofinance account.

Have a nice day!

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Wow I find this post so helpful and very informative. I didn't know about the headset and it's connection to Facebook but I'm glad I learnt about that now. Haven't been on Facebook for a while now since I joined Hive, Hive has taken over and I'm loving it.

Indeed we live two different lives, the real world and the virtual live but I try my best to live the same in both aspect. I just wanna be real, that's all.

Protecting one's account is important now and later in the future. Indeed, we might just just wake one day to see that all our info are gone and you're right to say when that happens, it's like we're dead 😬 scary but true and I couldn't agree more.

Wonderful post sir, I hope more people read this to learn from it like me. Thanks for the information shared.


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This is a great post. It really points out how insidious the big tech giants really are. As you pointed out, it makes perfect business sense for FB to set things up this way, but from a users perspective, the ramifications could be horrendous. This is why Hive needs to keep developing things in this arena. As they continue building the infrastructure and the tools devs can "play" with, the innovation here could far, far outstrip the likes of the social media giants once the real talent in the dev world realizes what is actually at stake.

I'm not saying we don't have great devs here, we do, but there are obviously thousands of others out there who could really expand the entire HIVE ecosystem if they knew it existed.

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