The Joystream Manifesto

Our Manifesto units out each the issues we consider are associated with digital media platforms of their current kind in addition to our proposed resolution to those issues.

Problem

We consider that artwork, be it as literature, music, film, video games or performance, is a important tool through which societies establish a shared understanding of what’s frequent data amongst all members. These expressions define values and narratives that end up shaping culture, religion and even public coverage. It due to this fact issues deeply how it’s financed, distributed and paid for.

Digital media has become the primary medium via which such expression is distributed, and digital media platforms have turn out to be the key institutions organizing this activity.

Unfortunately, because of community https://www.joystream.org/ results, economies of scale, laws and political pursuits, we are today left with handful of huge establishments which set the phrases for the way this occurs. They are almost completely unaccountable to normal market and political mechanisms.

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

Goal

We name for an association the place media platforms are accountable to the people they impact, that are primarily their users, be it as customers, creatives, third get together developer or staff.

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

Thesis

Our core thesis is that there are two primary challenges which should be addressed to attain this aim, and that an appropriate utility of contemporary distributed methods technology, together with blockchains, smart contracts and tokens, is the best means to do so.

The Wedge

First is the query of the way to create an alternative from scratch in the face of platform externalities which make any new platform nearly useless, no matter any of its inherent traits. The strategy of doing this sort of bootstrapping has traditionally been principally an artwork, the place success has hardly ever been reproducible.

We consider that blockchain tokens, earned by and issued to early members, have been proven to be extremely efficient at mobilizing, integrating and motivating an international and dynamic community.

This has now repeatedly allowed nascent communities, like the Bitcoin neighborhood, to overcome the preliminary community effect hurdle. There is no certainty that this shall be adequate, however we consider this mechanism is as promising as something which is likely to have an opportunity in a very long time.

Accountability at scale

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

We perceive there to be two basic ways that individuals can hold institutions of any kind 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 establishment from within. The effectiveness of this is determined by some capacity to both share dependable info with different members, and have some impact on inside governance processes. Current media platforms present users no effective means of doing either.

We imagine that blockchains provide an organizational and economic infrastructure which can tackle each problems. The public, verifiable and immutable historical past of financial and administrative data, provides an excellent basis for customers to understand the present and past state of the platform. This permits anyone to make incontestable claims about related facts and circumstances.

Further, blockchain tokens permit us to make use and control of a platform inseparable, giving customers an automated seat at the desk in deliberating over platform level decisions.

All that is required to determine, exercise or switch the capacity to participate in such exercise, is the ability to signal messages with identifiable cryptographic keys. Perfectly reliable contracting provides a big, dynamic and unrestricted set of users the technique of governing the platform. This can serve a variety of functions, corresponding to undertaking initiatives, regulating participation in numerous formally specified roles, or even updating the institutional rules themselves. This integration of dependable contracting into the financial rails provides an organizational infrastructure far more consistent with our aims of inclusive management than the traditional jurisdictional trust primarily based infrastructure.

Exit

Exit is the strategy of entirely ending participation in an institution in favor of both joining or creating an alternate. The effectiveness of this is dependent upon costs of leaving, and both becoming a member of or creating an alternative, all being low in comparison with the deprivation in the current institution. This is presently not the case.

By building platforms based on free open source software, open protocols and open data — as is the case with Blockchain methods, one dramatically lowers these prices. Since users control their very own knowledge, identity and belongings, they’ve a a lot easier time becoming a member of new platforms, and even taking their friends with them.

Open protocols and data will make multi homing interfaces ample, where users may not even need to switch, however as a substitute use multiple platforms simultaneously, which inspires platform stage competitors.

Even extra dramatically, reliance on open supply signifies that all the software program capital of a platform can simply be reused, and for the reason that complete organizational state is also public, complete ecosystems could be forked to create new various platforms with modified insurance policies and aims.