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It isn't clear to me that we've got a good technical, never mind social solution, to the problem of anonymous actors. I suspect that "be careful what you wish

It isn't clear to me that we've got a good technical, never mind social solution, to the problem of anonymous actors. I suspect that "be careful what you wish for" is applicable to the idea of a communication medium that "nobody can ever control or censor". We already have numerous problems caused by anonymity with our existing infrastructure (DDOS, ransomware, threats, defamation, etc.). I think neither extreme, a completely anonymous infrastructure or a completely non-anonymous infrastructure, is desirable.

fossuser 6y ago
I think Urbit's approach here is actually pretty good. Pseudonymous IDs that have a small, but non-zero cost. Your reputation is tied to the ID and the economics don't allow spinning up millions of them to spam people. They're building a from the feet up first principles approach to really solving the centralization incentive issues of the modern web and operating systems. It's super ambitious, but I think it's pretty cool (and it's not vaporware, the current stuff actually works - it's just early on). A lot of the other attempts at decentralized systems can't fix the server/client model or the spam problem - all which push users back to centralized services. https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/
- Teever 6y ago
  Email spam could be almost totally eliminated if you had to send someone a 1-24c micro transaction for them to receive your mail. Over the course of a year the costs to send would be balanced by the profit from receiving for your average person but for spammers it would be untenable.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Is email SPAM really a serious problem today? (Unless by SPAM you refer to marketing emails of various sorts that you agreed to in some manner and that provide an unsubscribe link.) Sure. Charging for emails would cut down on the volume some--and would eliminate the email that's occasionally interesting but I don't routinely read--but would also marginalize the use of non-commercial email for those with little money.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      It's only not a problem because centralized megacorps solved it and everyone has to use them because of the spam problem. If you're trying to come up with a model that isn't using centralized companies to solve the problem for you then it's still a problem. Part of the incentive towards centralization is because the spam problem is hard to solve in a decentralized way with the modern web.
      - Teever 6y ago
        I've wondered how much spam filters actually cost in terms of compute resources and electricity. I bet it's a lot. I bet there has to be a better way.
        edoceo 6y ago
        One tool I use is called greylog for postfix. Effective for me.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Totally fair. Though the only way to solve spam control in a decentralized way is probably to put in a system that no one will actually use.
      - jjav 6y ago
        > It's only not a problem because centralized megacorps solved it and everyone has to use them because of the spam problem. Is this a perception or do you have data on this? See my response to parent. Email spam from the point of view of self-hosted infrastructure is no longer a problem in my experience. No megacorps needed (or wanted, IMO).
        michaelt 6y ago
        The problem I had, when I tried to de-megacorp my e-mail, was with knowing whether the e-mails I sent got reliably delivered. I set up SPF, DKIM, DMARC, used an IP not on any blacklists, and so on - everything guides told me I ought to do. Still, not only would my test messages often go to spam, I'm pretty sure I saw some vanish entirely, not even making it to the spam folder. And this is a very insidious problem - did I e-mail X and they just didn't deign to reply? Or did my message never reach them?
- rtkwe 6y ago
  I like the idea but it does seem like you're setting up a poll tax to participate fully in the internet, simultaneously having it high enough to deter or at least raise the bar on scams and low enough to be affordable to the whole world is a hard ask.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    They have free IDs too, but groups can block them to reduce spam. The free IDs have some other negatives too I think (long names, harder to recover, etc.). The price is quite low ~$10 for a 'planet' or standard ID. Maybe in the developing world that price is too high, but I'd suspect if it succeeded to the point where that was an issue it could be solved without too much trouble. The ID solution is cool because it fixes the spam issue which is one of the core incentives behind centralization. The other core reason to centralize is server management and finding other users. If you design an OS that has this bit baked into it from the start you can make this complexity invisible to the user. You can have apps be p2p by default without the user having to know about it, you can make it easy for users to send photos or messages directly to each other rather than always having to interoperate with a middleman company (FB, Google etc.). Their approach of starting as a VM that runs in linux is a good idea, it allows iteration on something that's immediately usable. Their initial focus on chat too I think is smart - it gets people using it while they improve it and immediately seeing changes. Long term goal would be getting urbit running on its own hardware without the virtual layer, but I think if they started trying to do that they wouldn't succeed. With the current approach they might.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > I like the idea but it does seem like you're setting up a poll tax to participate fully in the internet, simultaneously having it high enough to deter or at least raise the bar on scams and low enough to be affordable to the whole world is a hard ask. It's not actually that hard, because ordinary users can generate one ID and use it for many years, but spammers have to generate a new ID every five minutes because they immediately get blocked and have all content associated with the blocked IDs get retroactively dumped in the spam folder. So the cost to spammers is literally a million times higher than it is for ordinary users, which is exactly the sort of thing that actually works.
- diggernet 6y ago
  Urbit is interesting, but this troubles me: > there are only 2^32 (~4B) Urbit IDs, so they cost something. > Ultimately, we want your Urbit ID to feel like a civilizational key. If your Urbit ID were a piece of hardware, you could tap it to unlock a door, swipe it to buy a coffee, and plug it into any computer to log in. Your Urbit ID should be a unique, beautiful object that’s both an address and a wallet. It’s a key to a secret club and the ticket to your digital life. So I guess almost half the current global population is excluded from civilization?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    They talk about that - if they're approaching the limit they'd make changes to produce more IDs. The network has a built in governing body that can do things like that (and they would since restricting access isn't the goal).
    - tremon 6y ago
      But if the number of available Urbit IDs can be scaled up and down on an as-needed basis, why did they start with 4B and not, for example, 1M?
      - rtkwe 6y ago
        32-bits is just a convenient round number to wrap everything around.
  - jlehman 6y ago
    Apparently it's taken us ~30 years to come close[1] to this number of users on the current internet. Seems like not an issue for a very long time, and if it becomes one, it can be amended. That said, anyone can get on Urbit for free as a comet. The only real limitations on comets are social in nature—not technological. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
konjin 6y ago
It's actually really easy: force people to pay per packet. The problem is that we don't have any global system that has solved fast micro-transactions at a global scale without the concept of a permanent identity. At the dumbest level forums would look much different to what they do today if every post cost you $1 and every downvote $0.25.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
giantrobot 6y ago
> DDOS, ransomware, threats, defamation, etc These problems are not caused by anonymity. DDoS and ransomware are problems that have their roots in poor security of consumer operating systems. Very few DDoS participants or ransomware victims are willing to be such. Threats and defamation are often done by people literally posting on social media accounts with their names and personal details.

fossuser 6y ago

I think Urbit's approach here is actually pretty good. Pseudonymous IDs that have a small, but non-zero cost. Your reputation is tied to the ID and the economics don't allow spinning up millions of them to spam people. They're building a from the feet up first principles approach to really solving the centralization incentive issues of the modern web and operating systems. It's super ambitious, but I think it's pretty cool (and it's not vaporware, the current stuff actually works - it's just early on). A lot of the other attempts at decentralized systems can't fix the server/client model or the spam problem - all which push users back to centralized services. https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/

Teever 6y ago
Email spam could be almost totally eliminated if you had to send someone a 1-24c micro transaction for them to receive your mail. Over the course of a year the costs to send would be balanced by the profit from receiving for your average person but for spammers it would be untenable.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 6y ago
  Is email SPAM really a serious problem today? (Unless by SPAM you refer to marketing emails of various sorts that you agreed to in some manner and that provide an unsubscribe link.) Sure. Charging for emails would cut down on the volume some--and would eliminate the email that's occasionally interesting but I don't routinely read--but would also marginalize the use of non-commercial email for those with little money.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    It's only not a problem because centralized megacorps solved it and everyone has to use them because of the spam problem. If you're trying to come up with a model that isn't using centralized companies to solve the problem for you then it's still a problem. Part of the incentive towards centralization is because the spam problem is hard to solve in a decentralized way with the modern web.
    - Teever 6y ago
      I've wondered how much spam filters actually cost in terms of compute resources and electricity. I bet it's a lot. I bet there has to be a better way.
      - edoceo 6y ago
        One tool I use is called greylog for postfix. Effective for me.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Totally fair. Though the only way to solve spam control in a decentralized way is probably to put in a system that no one will actually use.
    - jjav 6y ago
      > It's only not a problem because centralized megacorps solved it and everyone has to use them because of the spam problem. Is this a perception or do you have data on this? See my response to parent. Email spam from the point of view of self-hosted infrastructure is no longer a problem in my experience. No megacorps needed (or wanted, IMO).
      - michaelt 6y ago
        The problem I had, when I tried to de-megacorp my e-mail, was with knowing whether the e-mails I sent got reliably delivered. I set up SPF, DKIM, DMARC, used an IP not on any blacklists, and so on - everything guides told me I ought to do. Still, not only would my test messages often go to spam, I'm pretty sure I saw some vanish entirely, not even making it to the spam folder. And this is a very insidious problem - did I e-mail X and they just didn't deign to reply? Or did my message never reach them?
rtkwe 6y ago
I like the idea but it does seem like you're setting up a poll tax to participate fully in the internet, simultaneously having it high enough to deter or at least raise the bar on scams and low enough to be affordable to the whole world is a hard ask.
- fossuser 6y ago
  They have free IDs too, but groups can block them to reduce spam. The free IDs have some other negatives too I think (long names, harder to recover, etc.). The price is quite low ~$10 for a 'planet' or standard ID. Maybe in the developing world that price is too high, but I'd suspect if it succeeded to the point where that was an issue it could be solved without too much trouble. The ID solution is cool because it fixes the spam issue which is one of the core incentives behind centralization. The other core reason to centralize is server management and finding other users. If you design an OS that has this bit baked into it from the start you can make this complexity invisible to the user. You can have apps be p2p by default without the user having to know about it, you can make it easy for users to send photos or messages directly to each other rather than always having to interoperate with a middleman company (FB, Google etc.). Their approach of starting as a VM that runs in linux is a good idea, it allows iteration on something that's immediately usable. Their initial focus on chat too I think is smart - it gets people using it while they improve it and immediately seeing changes. Long term goal would be getting urbit running on its own hardware without the virtual layer, but I think if they started trying to do that they wouldn't succeed. With the current approach they might.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > I like the idea but it does seem like you're setting up a poll tax to participate fully in the internet, simultaneously having it high enough to deter or at least raise the bar on scams and low enough to be affordable to the whole world is a hard ask. It's not actually that hard, because ordinary users can generate one ID and use it for many years, but spammers have to generate a new ID every five minutes because they immediately get blocked and have all content associated with the blocked IDs get retroactively dumped in the spam folder. So the cost to spammers is literally a million times higher than it is for ordinary users, which is exactly the sort of thing that actually works.
diggernet 6y ago
Urbit is interesting, but this troubles me: > there are only 2^32 (~4B) Urbit IDs, so they cost something. > Ultimately, we want your Urbit ID to feel like a civilizational key. If your Urbit ID were a piece of hardware, you could tap it to unlock a door, swipe it to buy a coffee, and plug it into any computer to log in. Your Urbit ID should be a unique, beautiful object that’s both an address and a wallet. It’s a key to a secret club and the ticket to your digital life. So I guess almost half the current global population is excluded from civilization?
- fossuser 6y ago
  They talk about that - if they're approaching the limit they'd make changes to produce more IDs. The network has a built in governing body that can do things like that (and they would since restricting access isn't the goal).
  - tremon 6y ago
    But if the number of available Urbit IDs can be scaled up and down on an as-needed basis, why did they start with 4B and not, for example, 1M?
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      32-bits is just a convenient round number to wrap everything around.
- jlehman 6y ago
  Apparently it's taken us ~30 years to come close[1] to this number of users on the current internet. Seems like not an issue for a very long time, and if it becomes one, it can be amended. That said, anyone can get on Urbit for free as a comet. The only real limitations on comets are social in nature—not technological. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...

konjin 6y ago

It's actually really easy: force people to pay per packet. The problem is that we don't have any global system that has solved fast micro-transactions at a global scale without the concept of a permanent identity. At the dumbest level forums would look much different to what they do today if every post cost you $1 and every downvote $0.25.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

giantrobot 6y ago

> DDOS, ransomware, threats, defamation, etc These problems are not caused by anonymity. DDoS and ransomware are problems that have their roots in poor security of consumer operating systems. Very few DDoS participants or ransomware victims are willing to be such. Threats and defamation are often done by people literally posting on social media accounts with their names and personal details.