As I said in previous opportunities I am always looking for interesting projects in the crypto and blockchain world, whose main quality to highlight is its decentralized character, a factor that seems to me essential to get involved in any business. However, just as not everything that glitters is gold, not everything decentralized is essentially a good idea to join and give your money blindly, so it is first necessary to analyze very well what it is before making a decision that you might regret.
I felt this feeling of "Danger" when I came across a project called BitClout, which is presented as the revolution of social networks. When you enter BitClout you immediately notice an advertisement that says: "The crypto social network", a slogan that invites people to join this project. Then a note briefly explains what it's all about: "Everyone gets their own coin. Your favorite creator has a coin that you can buy or sell. The price goes up as more people buy. You can also have your own currency". Then you see a list of accounts with more than outstanding names such as Elon Musk, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and even President Donald Trump, each with an assigned value or price, so curiosity invites you to delve deeper into what this new social space on the web is all about.
At first glance the Bitcount interface is designed to resemble Twitter, on the other hand its system makes you intuit that these celebrities are already part of the social network, but we must add a detail that casts doubt on the ethics of this platform: none of the celebrities have joined this social network or authorized to use their image or profit from their name.
BitClout began to be the talk of the web a few weeks ago when the media echoed the support that capital from Silicon Valley offered to this social network. Immediately, important influencers (and others who are not) began to warn that something shady was going on with this Bitclout just starting its first steps: profiles created in their own name, unauthorized marketing and undue profit through the use of image rights not granted. With total impudence, the creators of this social network quote the fame of others in a kind of secondary market within BitClout, and taking advantage of its decentralized condition (theoretically without any institution or company taking responsibility for its operation) offered them the option to claim it, but they would only receive a part of the money invested in these people in case of complaints to Bitclout. So far it all sounds like a business devised by Carlo Ponzi, and certainly this site invites you to think that something smells very bad, precisely because of the simplicity of its operation.
The purpose behind BitClout is that anyone who wants to, following his particular vision of the meaning of content monetization, can make money using blockchain technology. Through a personal token the rest of the investors who are members of the network, can bet their money on a celebrity, giving a monetary value to that user. Just like Instagram or Twitter, if you have a great reputation you will get many people interested in acquiring your tokens and they will become more expensive. Theoretically whoever generated a stake for you in your early days at lower prices will be able to make a profit in the future.
But as we delve deeper into the guts of this social network we find the dark spots. First of all, if you want to buy tokens you have to offer your bitcoins for the web's own currency, by the way, if you do not own a single one of its cryptocurrencies it will be impossible to use the system. Once the registration is formalized you will have to use the BitClout cryptocurrencies to buy the currency of the celebrity of your choice, but also to make inquiries or request support. To motivate members to buy personal tokens, BitClout offers some attractive features, such as writing private messages to the profile of the influencer you invest in, exclusive access, unique content for sponsors or investors, among the most outstanding. But it is necessary to consider that all your profit depends on the reputation of a user and the way his image is speculated, and as if that were not enough, even if you get a lot of benefits today, there is no way to convert those coins back to bitcoin or other crypto.
What is most striking about this particular social network is that it is suspected that behind it there are names of companies as prominent as the influencers they are trying to exploit as:Coinbase, Winklevoss Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya's Sequoia Capita even one of the founders of Reddit Alexis Ohanian is apparently involved in this website. Despite the fact that several of these institutions have shown their support despite the criticism, the problem lies in the fact that many celebrities have shown their intention to apply legal actions against BitClout, so scandals are part of the daily life of this project.
But to what extent is this way of monetizing content legal? The network takes advantage of the legal loopholes around the world of cryptocurrencies, a situation that these projects with a certain ethical duality in their constitution take advantage of very well. Beyond the legal aspect, is it ethical to make use of profiles of people who are not yet registered in the project? The justification is that the most expensive accounts are reserved so that at an eventual moment the celebrity certifies that it is under his total control (verified). The creators of BitClout made use of something called "scraping", the more than 10,000 most important Twitter profiles to add them to their system.
This is how BitClout was able to transfer the interface with the comments of Twitter users such as Justin Bieber, showing the same data as on the bluebird network. Basically, the image of a celebrity is being used to take economic benefits without having the person's authorization. In other countries we can find similar regulations applicable. Each country has its own legal way of dealing with this legal situation presented by this social network, however the creators are probably betting on the fact that because there is no one directly responsible, people will desist from denouncing and choose to verify their accounts, make use of their reserved profile and take the profits.
There is probably a good intention behind this social network, but by my nature I tend to be very suspicious when something seems very hard to believe. When you enter BitCloud the profiles that appear at the forefront of the web are of the most prominent people of today, with Elon Musk at the head, so they could be using the image of the richest man in the world in a deceptive way to attract mimbros to their community and buy their tokens, without considering the fact of not knowing who is using and controlling that profile while the real user is not yet using and verifying the account, considering that if you want to use your space half of the profits are kept by the system and if you want to delete your account you must pay for it. Just like Twitter, when the profile has been claimed or created by a specific person it generates a small confirmation star, if on the other hand you are not yet in possession of your account a clock is drawn next to the name as a symbol that it is reserved waiting for its owner to claim it.
On the other hand, BitClout is under suspicion as to what they are doing with the funds collected, as it is thought that the people behind this social network make use of the money collected. Recall that users must buy BitClout tokens with their bitcoins, which they cannot yet withdraw, while the funds in BTC go to cold wallets, off the trail of the official exchange houses, at least that is what the web magazine Decrypt assures. On the other hand, Twitter reports that BitClout has security flaws that would probably give anyone access to its servers and steal the platform's funds through the keys, where possibly any employee with access to the servers can steal all the platform's money if they allow it.
