Primas Token(PST): Changing the Content Market with Blockchain

[primas]

For more information, please visit the website of Primas at newbie deactivated link:https://primas.io/ [nonactive].
Primas is an open ecosystem for publication, recommendation and transaction of content. Primas team is committed to using blockchain and other technology to restructure the content market, so as to solve the problem in which quality content could hardly be recognized, disseminated and paid for. Decentralized content sourcing and recommendation mechanism brings quality content to users; a brand-new content evaluation system ensures direct benefits to the producers of quality content; tamper-proof property of the blockchain provides copyright protection for original writers; and decentralized data management offers better protection for users privacy.

In this age of information explosion, everyone is confronted with a challenge to face and process a mountain of information. For the common people, it’s obviously difficult to pick the desired and useful pieces out of such a big mass.
Driven by booming user demand on the market, some centralized content platforms emerged one after another, such as web portals, social networks and search engines. By indexing and integrating online resources, they have greatly boosted information access to bring convenience to people’s life. Today, common users can obtain information they want by searching at any time or accessing content recommended by the platforms.
However, as some influential content platforms kept growing and expanding, problems also gradually showed up.
Recently, the European Union imposed the harshest ever anti-trust punishment on Google. On June 27, the European Commission announced its decision to fine Google EURO 2.42 billion (or USD 2.7 billion) for its abuse of dominant market position, whereby Google manipulated its search results to give its own Google Shopping better rankings to the detriment of competing services.

“Distorted” Display of Content at Centralized Platforms
This incident revealed the manipulation and intervention of content display by the platform. Yet it was not the first time Google had been investigated and questioned for such behaviors.
On June 9, 2016, a video shared on Youtube attracted great attention. SourceFed, a channel on Youtube, revealed a new discovery in this video clip: for unidentified reasons, Google had been trying to remove negative news unfavorable to Hillary Clinton from its search recommendations (search options offered to users when they type keywords into the search box). It was also known that Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, worked then in a company that invested in a service provider offering big data analysis for Hillary’s campaign team.
These stories showed that in face of business interests, even companies claiming to “do no evil” may deviate from the right course. When search results are no longer objective and complete after being tampered with by search engines that pursue their own interests, users lose their autonomy in information acquisition.
Similarly, in a recommendations system, users generally receive information in a passive manner and their demand is vague and not clearly defined. The modern content recommendation engines are capable of anticipating user’s preferred content through the collection and analysis of their habits, and proactively recommend such content to them.
Though content recommendation engines operating on the web portals and social networks have greatly lowered the barriers for users to obtain information, they have brought bigger problems. Based on algorithms, these engines recommend content we “like” and ignore those “disliked”. This way the information we receive tend be limited to an increasingly narrower scope, trapping us in a small “information bubble”.
Under such conditions, information displayed by the platforms will be incomplete due to the intentional intervention in search results and recommendations. Users who expect to get effective information may end up misled.

Information Credibility and Privacy
Tools for search, recommendation and subscription can make information easier to get, but fail to address the credibility issue. Most information on the Internet only contain a URL and the content itself. After being transferred multiple times, the same information may be changed, either intentionally or unintentionally, and some of the changes may even lead us to a judgment that is the opposite of what is actually meant by the original information.
Even in real life, faced with similar pieces of information, we may find it difficult to tell which piece is original and reliable, and which is altered and faked. When search and recommendation have been tampered with, as mentioned above, content displayed will be even less reliable.
Also, when we use the search engines and content apps, a large amount of our usage data are being collected at the backstage. For example, user profiles can be recorded using account registration information and browsing history. On the one hand, centralized platforms can gain huge benefits from data on user privacy; on the other hand, these private information often face the risk of being leaked.
Users’ privacy will not be secured as long as their identity information and use habits can be easily accessed or even stolen and traded on the black market by platform staff.

Solutions Enabled by Blockchain
Whether it’s “search” or “recommendation”, they all involve the selecting and screening of information by centralized platforms using machine algorithm. Intentional tempering is hardly preventable at the centralized platforms. Also, the large-scale use of machine algorithm will unavoidably aggravate the Matthew Effect, whereby the strong gets stronger and the weak gets weaker, and content display will thus follow the power-law distribution at an even faster rate --- meeting our eyes are only less than 20% percent of the total content.
Additionally, centralized platforms are unable to address the credibility issue and effectively protect user privacy.
How can we safely obtain information that is really needed?
Blockchain is a “massive chain that truthfully records facts”. By recording data on a tamper-proof public ledger in a distributed manner, it gives more people access to real and credible information, and truly realizes a shift from information Internet to value Internet. Applied to the content sector, Blockchain technology will fully solve problems that have baffled centralized systems and improve the credibility and integrity of displayed content. At the same time, it will secure user privacy with the algorithms and applications that are completely open-sourced and transparent.

The Timely Advent of Primas
Primas platform will adopt social groups and social recommendation to prevent the intentional manipulating and intervening of content display that exist on centralized platforms.
From a practical perspective, social recommendation is more efficient than recommendation based on algorithm. By establishing information social groups, Primas brings together people with shared interests, shared values and shared expectations to further assess the credibility of information.
On Primas clients, social group is the major organizational structure for information. After certain content is published inside such a group, whether it is original or introduced from external sources, it will be evaluated by group members before further dissemination. The quality of a social group is decided by content contributed by all its members, and the rating of a group will also influence quality evaluation of content in the group.
 “On Primas platform, users can choose social groups that interest them, which will all be governed by themselves and free of manipulation by any centralized algorithm. All other algorithms related to content display are open-sourced and transparent. Users can also join the optimization of these algorithms”, said Gan Lu, CTO of Yuanben.
Additionally, while solving the drawbacks of recommendation, Primas will use its Primas DNA to introduce the multi-dimensional Metadata, which can help improve content credibility.
In terms of privacy protection at the Primas network, information that must be disclosed will be available publicly and transparently and recorded on Blockchain, e.g. author’s name and transaction information, while to fully secure users privacy, their browsing history and private information will not be recorded and uploaded.
“As a brand-new technology, Blockchain is most significant in that it is capable of restoring the value of the Internet as well as everyone in the society”, said Wu Peng, CEO of Yuanben, in his comment on Blockchain.
Considering these, Primas launched by the Yuanben Blockchain team offers timely solutions for the drawbacks existing at the centralized online content platforms. It not only brings convenience to users, but also restores the intrinsic value of search, recommendation and content display.