About a month ago I had an admin error (in large part my fault) send this blog temporarily silent. Whilst I dealt with my supplier of internet services to sort the problem out I decided that this was the push I needed to get involved with the decentralised internet or Web3 as some call it. I’ve become increasingly worried about the state of freedom of speech and expression in the United Kingdom and wanted to be able to post my writings on a platform that was as near as 100% uncensorable as possible which is why I decided to go for decentralised blogging ages ago but the temporary outage gave me the push to do so.

I knew that there was quite a lot of options to choose from with regard decentralised platforms for free speech but I chose the Hive system to host my words using the PeakD blogging platform to publish content. I chose Hive because I follow the brilliant Israeli commentator Dr Brian of London (@brianoflondon ) who is deeply involved with Hive on X and was able to see what a great platform Hive is and the great potential in it’s content creation abilities and cryptocurrency system.

When I had the outage I tried to get on to Hive but being an ‘appliance operator’* with regards decentralised stuff and its related cryptocurrency I failed dismally. Because I failed on my initial attempt to get onto Hive I contacted Brian and he graciously and generously helped me get started** and to create both the crypto base account, which you absolutely need to use the system and the PeakD account.

It’s been a steep learning curve for me and I wanted to give my honest impression of my experience with Hive which may be helpful for those who are not tech bros or crypto experts but are just ordinary bods like myself. I won’t lie to you, I found Hive to be more difficult to get started with than other systems, but it’s worth sticking with it because of the advantages this platform gives you.

I’m going to set out the pros of the Hive platform and then the cons or the things that I’d like to see improved to make my life a bit easier.

PROS

It’s censorship free. Only the person who has created the account can delete either it or any of the content within it. This is a very big plus for people in places like the United Kingdom where censorship appears to be getting worse and worse. Unless the authorities manage to get hold of your access codes for Hive or you cave in and hand them over, nobody in the UK state can stop you saying what you are saying on Hive. However, what I would say is that if the authorities know who you are already they can put two and two together and link your writings to you so try to stay within the law on things like sub judice.

I’d say that Hive scores very highly with regards content robustness and is probably better even than the X platform is at the moment. Although at present Elon Musk’s X platform is seeing much use by Britons as being the only mainstream free speech orientated platform, Mr Musk or his employees can still take down stuff that they don’t like. Also it’s not entirely sure whether or not X would entertain requests for data from British police forces hunting down wrongthinkers. The previous management of Twitter are suspected of being ‘coppers narks’ but some clarification by X on policies with regard cooperation with UK police forces would be welcome. Hive does not have that problem. There is no CEO at Hive and no way that I can ascertain for anyone associated with Hive management to be able to press any big red censorship button.

The PeakD blogging content management system is extremely easy to use. You hit the pencil icon and you get a blank page to start writing. It couldn’t be simpler and would be very easy for those familiar with WordPress or other content management systems to get used to. In fact I’d say that if you are an experienced Facebook user then you can probably get your head around the basics of the PeakD blogging application.

I like the fact that when using PeakD you have a window for your text input on the left of the screen and a preview of how the words will look when published. The program also forces you to categorise your words with subject tags which I would do anyway but this is mandatory prior to publishing with PeakD. Also mandatory prior to publishing is the need to give a brief description of your piece. Neither of these mandatory actions are in any way onerous and to be quite frank are just good practise.

I do like the fact that content creators are rewarded with Hive Dollars when they publish and their work is appreciated by others. As well as having a fiat money equivalent, Hive’s currency can also be spent in community on products and services. The network of off internet entities that take Hive for payments in shops etc is growing which is good to see.

I would most certainly counsel any Briton who wants to comment on politics, religion, society or whatever and who wants to do it as anonymously as possible and have confidence that their words will not be censored by the platform, to take a careful look at Hive and PeakD. If what you want to say is in any way considered as ‘controversial’, even if it stating a biological fact such as women do not have penises, then you should seriously consider using the Hive platform and PeakD to host your content. This especially applies if you are British and want to talk about the shitshow that the nation has become or want to talk about stuff that those in authority might not be happy with you talking about.

Cons

Every platform or service or operating system has some negative thing about it. As a Linux user I’m very familiar with this swings and roundabouts situation as I know that unless I put in some work I’m effectively excluded from the sort of gaming that you can do on the PC. So it is with Hive and PeakD where there are a few minor niggles.

The first hurdle with this system is that you must sign up to Hive with some form of crypto payment. It’s a smallish amount but you need to have either access to crypto yourself or know someone who can make this payment for you then settle up with them later.

The second negative issue that I’ve encountered with Hive and PeakD is that on PeakD it doesn’t automatically pick up text formatting like some other content management systems do. The main issue with this is hyperlinks. With some other content management platforms I can write something in Open Office or Libre Office and include hyperlinks and know that the links and the bolding of text on links will be carried over on to the final post without too much trouble. On PeakD this doesn’t happen. When you’ve imported your text into PeakD you have to then add the hyperlinks and the associated text in manually which can add a bit of time and extra effort expended before you can publish.

I have to say that neither of these two negatives are for me or should be seen by others as deal breakers. They are just the idiosyncrasies of the system and can easily be worked around or overcome.

I must say that I’ve been very very impressed with Hive and PeakD. It really does do what it says on the tin and provides people with a censor-proof platform for their speech. I’ve only been on there for about a month and I like it very much already. I’m learning how to find people to follow and categorise posts in the format that PeakD wants and finding out more and more each day about this very interesting and valuable platform.

I would like more and more Britons to take up virtual residence on Hive and maybe blog via PeakD as it’s a brilliant outlet for Britons who might want to speak but who are worried about being censored by other platforms. You might find the learning curve a little steep at first but persist and you’ll probably find like me that this platform is great.

With censorship in Britain getting worse and worse and other platforms having showed themselves in the past to be all too willing to either censor wrongthinkers or hand their details over to the authorities you might well need Hive in the future for all your free speech needs. So why not give Hive and PeakD a try? You might like it and it’s a platform that I consider really worth supporting.

I will continue to cross post articles from this site, fahrenheit211.net onto my PeakD/Hive site which can be found at: https://peakd.com/@mrfahrenheit211 So why not sign up and come over and say ‘hello’

* ‘Appliance operator’ is a slur from CB radio used about someone who knows the absolute basics about their equipment but considerably less than they really should know.

** In order to say thank you to Brian I have given a donation to my local military veterans charity. I chose that charity on the grounds that this is a local charity rooted in the community and those veterans have probably, at some point in the last quarter century, been pointing bang bang sticks at the sort of jihadists who want Jews and Christians dead and thereby they’ve helped to keep me and my family safe.