Social media problems and solutions: 'Centralization is not sustainable'

Over the past 15 years or so, social media has gained tremendous traction.

Eric Yang, founder and executive director of Junto - a nonprofit decentralized social media startup - sees three main issues with the current landscape.

Essentially, profit drives said social media entities as their actions impact investors' pockets, Yang explained.

Looking out for themselves instead of users, these social media giants maintain their digital platforms with such profit tactics in mind, while playing on customers' psychological weaknesses, Yang posited.

At present, social media businesses wield significant power.

Summing up the three main issues he sees in social media, Yang noted: "The first one is really a business-model problem and then that influences the second one, which is the harmful user experience design, which shapes the type of digital culture we see." He added, "The third one would be the centralization of the technology and information."

Many startups have arisen over the years, boasting alternative decentralized social media options, such as YouTube alternate DTube.

The Junto Foundation oversees the social media platform.

App, with help from Telos, for example, essentially records users' information from current social media platforms via blockchain.

Some people will be kind and some others won't be, but there are things that you can do to shift that culture along the more positive end of the spectrum and that's why we've been really focused on redesigning the fundamentals of a lot of the user experience that we're used to on social media.