Facebook’s Zuckerberg On Decentralization And Cryptocurrencies

On January 4, 2017, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed some of his views on the social media site regarding the future of the platform, as well as decentralization and cryptocurrencies.

Zuckerberg, who has made his fortune on a technologically enabled social network, discussed the promise that technology holds for everyday people:

“One of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people’s hands … Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force.”

Zuckerberg went on to say that “many people have lost faith in that promise.” He pointed to the centralization of power among larger technology companies that dominate markets, as well as the surveillance government imposes upon its citizens.

As a counterpoint to the public perception that technology has risen up to centralize power, the social media mogul asserts that decentralized systems like cryptocurrencies “take power from centralized systems and put it back people’s hands.” He then warns, “But they come with the risk of being harder to control.”

“I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies,” said Zuckerberg, “and how best to use them in our services.”

Jeremy Nation is a writer living in Los Angeles with interests in technology, human rights, and cuisine. He is a full time staff writer for ETHNews and holds value in Ether.

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