Posts on Mind can now be stored forever on the Arweave blockchain

Though using blockchain for content storage offers increased resilience, the objective behind such a feature is censorship- resistance

Minds, the alternative social media platform, has announced the launch of a new feature that allows users to permanently save their content on the Arweave platform.  The privacy-focused social media will now ensure that nobody can ever delete content once published.

Minds CEO, Bill Ottman, explained the process of uploading such content in an interview with CoinTelegraph. Mind users can choose to publish on the “permaweb” without any charges or additional setups. Within several minutes, the content can be viewed on the Arweave block explorer, where it is expected to remain forever — or at least for as long as Arweave exists, he said.

This feature marks the first major integration of blockchain with the company’s content infrastructure. Ethereum-based tokens are already being used as rewards and for payment towards the company’s services. However, the integration of the blockweave, as called in Arweave terminology, is an important milestone as the social media platform itself was entirely based on traditional web servers

Ottman published the George Orwell quote “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth,” to inaugurate the new feature.

This is not the first time the idea of permanently storing content has emerged in the crypto space. Systems like Hive automatically saved all posts to a permanent blockchain. However, the choice on whether or not a user wants to store content permanently is as important as providing the feature to store content permanently, Ottman argued. “It’s all about providing optionality to the users,” he added.

It is true that not everyone might be interested in saving their social media history on a permanent platform forever. European privacy laws establish the “right to be forgotten” regulation for online platforms so that users can at any point delete all traces of their previous activity. Thus, the automatic storage of uploaded content permanently is not an ideal scenario, Ottman explains.

“I don’t think [permanent storage] necessary for every post. It’s a pretty big deal to post something permanently, you better not be saying anything that you’re going to regret. […] I do think you want to give people both options,” he said.

Immutable data storage will become more common Ottman explained. “It’s just the inevitable evolution of technology. Things are becoming more permanent, more transparent,” he said.

Written by Harshini Nag