Permatweet: Be an agent of free speech using Twitter and the Permaweb
Big news for all Twitter users. Metaweave, the cypherpunk social platform on Arweave, just released Permatweet. Let’s take a closer look at the new feature.
Permatweet is a feature within the Metaweave ecosystem which allows anyone with a Twitter account to backup any Tweet they want permanently and for free on Metaweave.xyz, an Arweave permadapp built during the open web foundry 4, on an immutable and decentralised storage: Arweave’s blockchain aka the Blockweave.
Our mission and why this is important
It’s more than clear that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. It’s one of the core essentials of all other human rights, allowing society to develop and progress. The new permatweet feature from Metaweave gives users the tools to provide that freedom from censorship and revisionism.
We believe that by giving individuals the choice to backup what they post on twitter permanently, we can play a big role to fighting censorship in general, hopefully influencing positive change in the world.
Metaweave was conceived from the idea to build a decentralised Twitter as an Arweave Permadapp. As the development of Metaweave progressed we started to think that a social ecosystem on Arweave was needed that’s why Arweave-Account (https://account.metaweave.xyz/)“Arweave’s DID” was brought to the public.We also wanted to bring a way for Twitter’s users to back up tweets permanently.
The fact that Elon Musk began to speak about buying Twitter to bring back freedom of speech on the platform convinced us that using the immutability of Arweave’s blockchain and Metaweave, a neutral permadapp was a good way to bring more freedom of speech, decentralisation and censorship resistance on Twitter. Metaweave’s answer to bring a solution to the lack of democracy and governance felt by twitter’s users in the platform’s moderation is Permatweet.
This is how it works
Permatweet uses the Twitter API and Metaweave.xyz to give the possibility to any twitter’s user to permanently backup any tweet they want.
To do so you just need to log into Twitter, when you see a tweet you would like to backup permanently, just comment it with one of those three hashtags:
- #save
- #archive
- #permaweb
To show you how simple it is I’ll backup a tweet and show you where you can find it on Metaweave.xyz. I choose to use #save for this example
Now if I go to metaweave.xyz and then click “Archived tweets”
I can see it has been permanently uploaded there. The post indicates the original link of the tweet, the twitter account that backed it up and the tx id of the Arweave’s transaction used to post the tweet on Metaweave.
How does this work in practice? This feature relies on the Permatweet Arweave-Account and on the twitter API. The API is used to detect every comment with one of the necessary hashtags and the Permatweet Arweave-account is linked to an Arweave wallet used to post the content of the tweet on Metaweave.
So for the feature to work the Metaweave team tops the Permatweet wallet up with $AR.
We consider this feature as a public good that we bring to Twitter users to give them the possibility to decide which content should stay online and visible forever despite the platform’s will.
If you want this feature to continue working over time and you feel concerned about freedom of speech on the internet you can make a donation to Permatweet’s arweave wallet:
Ressources:
Tweet used for the example
Permaversion of the Tweet used for the example
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