Performance and Security of a Centralized and Decentralized Media Application

Abstract

The rise of the Internet and social media platforms have shifted data ownership and control from users to service providers, allowing platforms to gain access to an unprecedented amount of personal data without any meaningful safeguards to protect user privacy. This paper outlines the points of failures in the centralized model through examples of historical violations, failures, and other flaws. It also provide an alternative, decentralized solution to social media where the user remains in charge of their data and privacy through a framework known as Blockstack. In order to assess the viability of the solution in terms of its performance and other factors, a centralized version of the application is also created to draw a comparison. The results establish that it is indeed possible to have a decentralized application that performs equivalently to a centralized counterpart, and users are ready and interested in an application that puts their privacy and security first.