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One of the good things I see coming out of Robinhood blocking trading, Twitter and Reddit booting problematic users, Parler getting vaporized, etc. is a sudden

One of the good things I see coming out of Robinhood blocking trading, Twitter and Reddit booting problematic users, Parler getting vaporized, etc. is a sudden realization amongst people of just how easily major parts of their lives can be instantly turned off by intermediaries. My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols.

bluetwo 6y ago
Until you get rid of forced arbitration clauses, consumer rights are an illusion.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Anti-trust law is a far cleaner way to approach that, with far fewer unintended consequences.
- karlmcguire 6y ago
  Yea, because that's been working great thus far.
  - theptip 6y ago
    Well no, the US hasn't been enforcing its existing antitrust laws very rigorously, that's the point the GP is making. E.g. see https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-enforcement-report/ https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-en... Rather than proposing a new technological solution to the problem ("platforms to protocols") which may work but is unproven, we could simply restart the use of existing tools that have been proven to work. This has the advantage of being a strategy that can be explained to non-technical folks.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      If I have a car that worked great 50 years ago but haven't been able to turn it on since the 70s when my neighbor destroyed the engine, I would not call that a proven, working car. The "existing tools" have been proven to have a major weakness, namely they can be neutered by regulatory capture. Unless you can get everyone to magically forget how they circumvented the rules last time, you can't simply restart using them.
  - alangibson 6y ago
    You can't really say antitrust hasn't been working when no one has been using it. The laws are fine if we have the will to apply them.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    "The government has been unwilling to use existing powers against powerful corporations, maybe if we give them new and more expansive powers that'll do the trick. There's no possible way that these new powers will be turned against the powerless, right?"
- tw600040 6y ago
  "movement from platforms to protocols" is essentially anti-trust laws codified
  - slg 6y ago
    Depending on how its done, "movement from platforms to protocols" can also be anarchy codified. Most people don't want that either.
    - worik 6y ago
      Please do not use the word "anarchy" as a synonym for "chaos". Anarchy is the opposite of chaos
      - slg 6y ago
        What distinction are you trying to make here? A completely open protocol with no single controlling entity would not be inherently beholden to government control or laws like a platform would be. It can result in the distribution of illegal content such as child porn. How is this not an example of potential anarchy?
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        Anarchists as a political group usually don't like it when anarchy is compared to chaos, as this is usually a comparison that was formed by their ideological opponents.
        slg 6y ago
        I still don't understand this point. I am not describing chaos. I am describing the specific drawbacks of a lack of centralized authority overseeing things. Isn't that the dictionary definition of anarchy. What am I missing?
        worik 6y ago
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I definitely support the notion of moving from platforms to protocols, at least in theory. I do think you're going to run into the need to regulate wherever communication starts impinging on not-purely-informational constructs, like securities. I really hope that gambling on GME is not a "major part" of a significant number of people's lives.
- YinglingLight 6y ago
  But the aftermath of elite HedgeFunds shorting companies that employ us peasants sure as hell does.
- alangibson 6y ago
  I was thinking more about being able to trade online, not GME specifically. TBH 'protocols not platforms' has become kind of a slogan lately, but history doesn't make it look too promising. Email is a protocol, but it has largely been dominated by Google. A really compelling product can capture a protocol.
  - soperj 6y ago
    Realistically though nothing at this moment can supplant gmail without people willing to move away from gmail. They make it hard for people to do their own thing because they spam filter out legitimate email coming from domains that they don't like.
  - m-chrzan 6y ago
    Could it be that people are just so used to platforms, that even in the case of the email protocol, they prefer to jump onto the Gmail platform that abstracts away from the protocol and provides a nice, easy to use platform? If so, "protocols, not platforms" remains justified, and proponents might hope that as people get more comfortable with protocols, they will drift away not only from the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, but also the Gmails. For me personally, even if we end up with large players offering the largest (presumably most product-focused) instances of various protocols (Gmail with email, imagine Tiwtter hosting the largest Mastodon instance, Discord providing Matrix hosting), the fact I have the freedom to federate and set up my own instance or pay a smaller provider that will respect my privacy, is still a much better situation than the current "platforms, no protocols".
sebmellen 6y ago
There was a relevant document posted earlier today at this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942632. "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)" Article subtitle: > Altering the internet's economic and digital infrastructure to promote free speech I am somewhat skeptical of crypto, but I do hope that the DeFi ecosystem, 20 years in the future, will act as a democratizing force for financial markets.
- zionic 6y ago
  DeFi is a core component of my ETH bull hypothesis. All this decentralized activity requires the purchase of ETH to pay for/transact on.
  - docmars 6y ago
    I'm skeptical of the idea that availability of decentralized services should be dependent on the activity of a market driving it. If for some reason, something unfavorable were to happen with that market, the services tied to it would be in jeopardy. That seems like a terrifying point of failure to have, unless I'm misunderstanding how it works. Perhaps a parallel here is: if the fiat markets are struggling, then small businesses may struggle and lack the business they need to sustain themselves due to economic fears and self-preservation, but that business can exist in some form without the market through free trade or other means of currency or agreements to provide products and services, not beholden to the mercy of a volatile, inaccessible digital system that the vast majority of people don't understand very well.
  - SEJeff 6y ago
    Solana seems like a better fit for DeFi than ETH. It is also much higher performance, which is very important for DeFi. Disclaimer: I don't hold solana or ETH.
  - sushisource 6y ago
    It requires some way to fund it, but that needn't necessarily be ETH. It also well could be, and they have first mover advantage. But, and it's a big but, I think the most important thing people who know much about crypto forget is: Other people are not like you. Most people have still never even heard of Etherium. Most people won't touch something like that without explicit approval from a government. Which, obviously, is somewhat contrary to the point. I think the real long term (20+ years) winners in this space will gracefully marry the old world with the new, until society has gotten used to these concepts and we can slowly deprecate some of the centralization.
daenz 6y ago
At the risk of sounding like an "I told you so" type of person, it is frustrating to speak out and see others speak out about future consequences of these kinds of actions, only to be drowned out by people liberally applying the slippery slope fallacy argument.
- thisiscorrect 6y ago
  I've never understood how a slippery slope argument is a fallacy, let alone a logical fallacy (like false syllogism or no true scotsman). The idea is essentially looking at current trends and extrapolating into the future. No prediction is necessarily correct, but it's not necessarily wrong either.
  - krapp 6y ago
    A slippery slope argument assumes the maximum degenerate outcome of sliding down the slope as a certainty, that no one will be able to correct for, mitigate or reverse the slide when it starts. That's what makes it a fallacy - it's a thought terminating cliche meant to eliminate the possibility of nuance, as any middle ground is implicitly part of the slope. Otherwise, it's just an argument that risk exists, which is obvious and uninteresting.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      Slippery slope is a valid political tactic for those outside the Overton window.
      - krapp 6y ago
        It's effective, because markets (including the marketplace of ideas) are irrational and bad faith tactics are often more effective at influencing people (at least in the short term) than reason and verifiable fact. I wouldn't consider it valid, though.
        ttt0 6y ago
yters 6y ago
Well, once the gov cracks down on ISPs game over. No way we can have a grassroots internet without the ISPs.
echelon 6y ago
Every time I mention this on Hacker News, I get downvoted by the neoliberal fascists that want to suppress the speech they feel comfortable with silencing. Free speech is only free if we allow all of it. Americans have thick skin. It's in our culture. We've accomplished so much in spite of internal disagreement and oppression: voting rights, women's rights, gay marriage (which still isn't enshrined in the constitution -- work to be done!) Imagine if we froze back in the 50's because we didn't have free speech. Pick any point in the timeline and freeze the American experiment. It will lead to a worse outcome. I can tolerate some idiots with racist hate flags, Westboro funeral protests, etc. Because the freedom we enjoy is worth so much more than their minor nuisance. edit: Yep, predictably downvoted. Go move to another country that isn't America so you don't have to listen to people you disagree with.
- theptip 6y ago
  > I get downvoted by the neoliberal fascists You might get fewer downvotes if you followed the HN rules, particularly "be nice". Also, in polite conversation, preemptively calling your fellow conversation partners fascists is a good way to get off on the wrong foot.
  - throwaway2381 6y ago
    While I agree with your main point re name calling, it's absolutely not true that you get fewer downvotes if you follow HN's written rules. There are also unwritten groupthink (for lack of a better phrase) rules for which you _will_ get downvoted for. I don't have many controversial opinions but sometimes they are outside the generally accepted "truths".
  - mnglkhn2 6y ago
    since when "free speech" means to be nice?! what a tool :)
- SR2Z 6y ago
  > Go move to another country that isn't America so you don't have to listen to people you disagree with. Wew lad. Also do you actually know what a neoliberal is?
treeman79 6y ago
Maybe make Protecting free speech part our governments highest law. Maybe we could amend the law. Seriously. Lots of people love to dump on the constitution as old and not relevant. But it’s meant to restrict government and protect people’s freedom.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  B-but what if people say mean things? :/
  - chaos986 6y ago
    That's part of the Sophie's Choice. If we have private owned social media, then they will moderate according to public opinion. If we have us government run social media then we have no moderation at all because 1st amendment applies only to us government. So is it morally allowable to discuss <abhorrent topic> online? Should it be law to allow or disallow <abhorrent topic>? Who decides what the majority of people consider to be abhorrent?
    - zarkov99 6y ago
      I think you central questions it the most important one, but the dichotomy between private and public is forced. A phone company is not forced to moderate the communication of its clients.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        I don't believe parent said they were forced, only that they would do it. And that makes sense, since their desire is to minimize damage to their brand. There is a simple solution to this if you don't like the way they behave: stop using their product, and recommend others do the same. Of course, your not using it doesn't prevent others from using it if they want to, but that's freedom of choice for you.
        6y ago
gameswithgo 6y ago
What is your hope for reforming the ability of a single person to keep repeating a lie and nearly causing an insurrection?
- alangibson 6y ago
  I wouldn't say 'nearly'. The Capitol Riot definitely fit the standard definition of an insurrection. Your 'single person' straw man aside, I don't think the conduits of conversation are the right place to attack this problem. It's just far too risky to have utterly unaccountable businesses be in the business of policing what people say. I have the radical opinion that the police should be doing the policing. If people are criming online (threats of violence, planning to overthrow the government), they should get a visit from The Law.
- preommr 6y ago
  That it should be up to congress and law enforcement - people that are accountable to the public, to make these rules. Everything about what twitter did was stupid. They let him talk for years, and then finally stopped him at the worst time. They cancelled him when there was little more damage he could do and ruined ideas of free speech neutrality and it allowed his ilk to claim censorship and it helped with making him a martyr. Just absolute stupidity. Letting corporations deal with dangerous thought leaders is not a solution that has even the slimmest chance of working.
  - alangibson 6y ago
    It's really hard not to think that Twitter's timing had alot to do with their stock price. It's hard to boot the user driving the most engagement on your platform.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Voter fraud happened. There's video evidence of it occurring in State Farm Arena in Fulton County, GA. There's forensic evidence of 70% failure rates on voting machines in Antirim County, Michigan. There's 1000+ witness affidavits signed and presented under the penalty of perjury in various legislatures around the country. There's also statistical fraud detection algorithms that have numerous red flags with regards to the 2020 election. Repeating the lie that claims of fraud are unsubstantiated is the real problem. We have a broken, hackable electoral system with systemic issues.
worker767424 6y ago
Throwing this out there, too: assorted government restrictions and lockdowns imposed by regional public health officials. The early ones were more justified because we knew less, but as the pandemic drug on, the burden of proof justifying closures needed to increase, and legislators needed to step up and legitimize the policies. It's like how the president can wage war for 90 days, but then has to get approval from congress.
- engineer_22 6y ago
  I'm with you on this. It's shameful that Congress and State Legislatures have abdicated power to executive functionaries indefinitely. We're closing in on D-Day+1 year and our deliberative bodies have yet to deliberate our public health policies (although Congress has proven they can stimulate demand for consumer goods, from time to time).
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  Especially in states like California. My rich friends can and continue to travel. My friends in the service sector are at home collecting a meager unemployment. It doesn’t jibe well with the ethos CA proudly proclaims. They shutdown outdoor dining and even playgrounds while Costco, Amazon warehouses and Best Buy can be packed. We also know and have data that masks work but salons were closed. (A case in Texas comes to mind where a barber had covid but didn’t pass it to any of the 45 clients because they wore masks). What was way more important was good ventilation and indoor masking. In general social psychology have to be factored in as well. Anecdotally speaking, shutting down outdoor dining pushed more people to party at home.
  - Bud 6y ago
    No, we don't have data that masks are protective in a salon situation where people are in close contact for a long time. I wouldn't trust the masks that most people are using (surgical masks with half-inch gaps on either side and quarter-inch gaps around the nose, or single-layer cloth masks) to protect me in that scenario.
    - 6y ago
tima101 6y ago
I hope that these events make more people put their savings and time into their own projects instead of bitcoin and stocks.
- worik 6y ago
  ...and stop the idea that you can make money by being a smart investor. It is possible. It is possible to make money buying lottery tickets too. The best way to make money is to work for it. Yet because of a demand for profit and return on investment working people are getting squeezed with low wages and bad conditions. Outrage at a invest platform doing some thing or another - I do not care about that. My outrage is at low wages and bad conditions for ordinary working people
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols. I don’t have much hope for this, mainly because being the owner of a platform is much more profitable than being one of many protocol end points. Look at git. It is hard to think of a more open protocol, and yet GitHub absolutely dominates and it is a big deal if they decide to cut off your repo. A better alternative is for government to fund and operate critical infrastructure or at least heavily regulate it. I don’t have to worry that I will get deplatformed from mail, because the USPS is there and they have strict legal requirements prohibiting them from deplatforming people. I don’t have to worry that I won’t be deplatformed from roads, because most roads are operated by the government, which is under strict legal precedents that they can’t deplatform me. It is similar with utilities such as electricity, water, gas which are privately operated but heavily regulated. Some of the internet infrastructure is both becoming more vital as has economies of scale such that there is an inherent drive for consolidation. As such, I think it is becoming time that such things be regulated like utilities.
- engineer_22 6y ago
  Is EFF doing the work to advocate for responsible regulation? Is there an alternative to EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation) that is more in line with the spirit of your comment?
- bananabreakfast 6y ago
  You are using the term "deplatform" completely wrong. None of the things you mention are platforms. Mail is not a platform. Roads are not a platform. Electricity, water and gas are not platforms. These are all examples of point to point connection. None of them allow you to reach millions of people unfederated. If you start sending out illegal hate mail to millions of people, you bet you'll be "deplatformed" by the USPS. They will cut off your account and probably press charges.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > If you start sending out illegal hate mail to millions of people, you bet you'll be "deplatformed" by the USPS. If you start sending out legal harassment mail to millions of people, you'll get a discount.
8ytecoder 6y ago
I’m less into the free speech component. I think companies should have the right to curate a community they see fit. What I do care about is moving to protocols and data portability. I want the ability to switch to another provider if I’m not happy with their decisions. I absolutely don’t like my data being held hostage. I also hope this realization extends to things like GMail which hasn’t yet seen a similar scrutiny
at-fates-hands 6y ago
Robinhood was just hit with class action lawsuit over this: The financial trading app Robinhood is been hit with a federal class action lawsuit after it restricted trades to stocks popular on the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets, sending Redditors and app users into a meltdown. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, alleges that the app “purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock ‘GME’ from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock rise, thereby deprived [sic] retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/robinhood-hit-with-class-action-after-trying-to-shut-down-wallstreetbets-gamestop-uprising https://www.thedailybeast.com/robinhood-hit-with-class-actio...
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
I think calling for violence then carrying out actual violence is a bit different than this. But yes, it's like these giants now have a taste for deplatforming and are liberally applying it now.
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
I'm not optimistic an "open-source brokerage" will ever exist. Barrier to entry is probably too high/impossible to overcome. Big hedge funds would just flat out refuse your orders or prioritize them at garbage levels.
riedel 6y ago
I think it is perfectly normal that major parts of ones life can be turned off by intermediaries. It is just that they have been become rather abstract and difficult to yell at.
drewcon 6y ago
Yeah I can't wait to live in a world where we enable more financial market mobbing by the uninformed and emotional masses. What could go wrong? Tune will change when RSUs and 401ks get effected.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of people I know don’t have RSUs nor 401ks.
  - drewcon 6y ago
    About 1/3 of Americans have a 401k. The RSU snipe was just for the orange website crowd.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
KirillPanov 6y ago
Never going to happen as long as people insist that stuff works on their walled-garden cellphone. Cellphone lockdowns are the keystone here. There are sensible arguments for cellphones being walled gardens (grandmas can't defend their phone against malware, etc), but this is the devil's bargain you have to accept. As long as people (a) want everything on their cellphone and (b) want it to be locked-down enough that they can trust it to not listen in on them and stalk their location, everything downstream of the cellphone will be intermediated.
- vineyardmike 6y ago
  Nah, i have tons of open-protocol stuff on my cell phone. And i could make more (with some time and my technical knowledge) if i wanted/needed. It would be nice if it was easier to enter/exit the garden at will, sure, but thats not the same thing. I'm technically competent but these systems are so complex i don't think i could defend against malware in a complete open system. Actually, they're so complex that i do not think its possible to completely defend against malware as an end user without serious changes to behavior that is undesirable to most (eg. stop download apps so freely)
eternalban 6y ago
At this rate, they will red pill everyone with a pulse. It's a good thing (/s alert) that we have legislative solution in the pipeline just in time to address the inevitable social consequences.
Zigurd 6y ago
This isn't All One Thing. It isn't even all one thing inside the Robin Hood/Gamestop thing. Wall Street Bets got banned on Discord for calls to violent action, on the one hand, and their bets got throttled on Robin Hood because Robin Hood's data customers, who are legal-ishly front-running Robin Hood users, do not like what Robin Hood users are legal-ishly doing.
breakfastduck 6y ago
I actually think you are sadly wrong with that hope, as much as I also wish it were true. Unfortunately, many people (sadly including the far left, who 10 years ago I would have called myself part of) & the media are actively celebrating these blocks and shutdowns because it serves their ideology. For now.
balls187 6y ago
I just ran through a thought experiment--if Google (gmail) Apple (my phone) and Tmobile (the current owners of my number) all simultaneously nuked me, could I recover? Luckily yes. Online access would be hindered, but nearly all my financial resources are handled through a local credit union.
- asenna 6y ago
  Even better - having savings in a crypto hardware wallet :)
  - balls187 6y ago
    That seems like that would potentially stave off government locking off access, which is where I am most vulnerable. I'm not in fear of the government seizing my assets, but I don't trust Google not to lock me out due to an algorithm run amok, or Tmobile giving my number away due to simple social engineering (that actually happened). Apple I trust.
subsubzero 6y ago
I agree, instead of the original idea of the internet being a utopia of free speech, decentralization and free trade, it has devolved into a place where a select few oligarchies reign supreme pushing their views and actions onto the billions of users forced into their monopolies. Laws do not apply to them and even when they break their own TOS there are no repercussions. A strong digital rights for users is a good start, but I think the end goal is that they(the tech monopolies) are essential utilities for a majority of the world and should be regulated as such. A CEO should not be able to silence a democratically elected leader from a communications platform(congress or a govt. communications committee should decide), users should be able to buy the stock of their choosing(the SEC can decide to halt trading pending illegal behavior) and not have that right removed by a companies CEO.
974373493200 6y ago
> My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols. I hope so too and I hope that movement will develop and adopt technological solutions and not advocate for government force. This is an opportunity for people to control their means of communication and create a more robust internet that can better withstand censorship attempts in the future. I fear it will instead be taken advantage of by people who want to increase government control perhaps to prevent competition with the currently dominant actors on the market. Any further normalization of government control of communication or the internet must be resisted if we are to have any chance to keep the truly wonderful thing that the internet is today, despite all its imperfections.
chaostheory 6y ago
This should help kickstart a new decentralization movement.
chemmail 6y ago
That assumes people can see past Friday, not happening.
inopinatus 6y ago
Alternative take; the following are not major parts of your life: > Robinhood, Parler, Twitter, Reddit (et cetera) but represent trivial ephemera whose significance for the individual, following abandonment/deletion, vanishes into hindsight once the endowment effect and separation anxiety wears off.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
I don't think any of the services you've cited are considered "major" services by any stretch of the imagination.
- Majestic121 6y ago
  Yes, they are considered major services by a lot of people.
g9yuayon 6y ago
I doubt it. Robinhood is now citing misinformation as the reason to "protect its users". Misinformation and disinformation are really the weapons of mass destruction. Cite it, and you get your superpower. Twitter does it. FB does it. Media, oh media loves it. So, what's wrong with Robinhood again?
ck2 6y ago
I'm still wondering when we are going to get neighborhood-wide and then chained mesh wifi networks that bypass ISPs I know that exists in pieces and small projects but it's not like more than a few dozen people in any town even can fathom what that is or why it's a good idea. Google and Apple would never do this but imagine if every smartphone came not only with built in mesh-wifi ability but was on by default so it all acted as a repeater, you could probably communicate across entire states and countries given enough seconds like store-and-forward and ham radio-like solutions.

bluetwo 6y ago

Until you get rid of forced arbitration clauses, consumer rights are an illusion.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Anti-trust law is a far cleaner way to approach that, with far fewer unintended consequences.

karlmcguire 6y ago
Yea, because that's been working great thus far.
- theptip 6y ago
  Well no, the US hasn't been enforcing its existing antitrust laws very rigorously, that's the point the GP is making. E.g. see https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-enforcement-report/ https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-en... Rather than proposing a new technological solution to the problem ("platforms to protocols") which may work but is unproven, we could simply restart the use of existing tools that have been proven to work. This has the advantage of being a strategy that can be explained to non-technical folks.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    If I have a car that worked great 50 years ago but haven't been able to turn it on since the 70s when my neighbor destroyed the engine, I would not call that a proven, working car. The "existing tools" have been proven to have a major weakness, namely they can be neutered by regulatory capture. Unless you can get everyone to magically forget how they circumvented the rules last time, you can't simply restart using them.
- alangibson 6y ago
  You can't really say antitrust hasn't been working when no one has been using it. The laws are fine if we have the will to apply them.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  "The government has been unwilling to use existing powers against powerful corporations, maybe if we give them new and more expansive powers that'll do the trick. There's no possible way that these new powers will be turned against the powerless, right?"
tw600040 6y ago
"movement from platforms to protocols" is essentially anti-trust laws codified
- slg 6y ago
  Depending on how its done, "movement from platforms to protocols" can also be anarchy codified. Most people don't want that either.
  - worik 6y ago
    Please do not use the word "anarchy" as a synonym for "chaos". Anarchy is the opposite of chaos
    - slg 6y ago
      What distinction are you trying to make here? A completely open protocol with no single controlling entity would not be inherently beholden to government control or laws like a platform would be. It can result in the distribution of illegal content such as child porn. How is this not an example of potential anarchy?
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        Anarchists as a political group usually don't like it when anarchy is compared to chaos, as this is usually a comparison that was formed by their ideological opponents.
        slg 6y ago
        I still don't understand this point. I am not describing chaos. I am describing the specific drawbacks of a lack of centralized authority overseeing things. Isn't that the dictionary definition of anarchy. What am I missing?
        worik 6y ago

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I definitely support the notion of moving from platforms to protocols, at least in theory. I do think you're going to run into the need to regulate wherever communication starts impinging on not-purely-informational constructs, like securities. I really hope that gambling on GME is not a "major part" of a significant number of people's lives.

YinglingLight 6y ago
But the aftermath of elite HedgeFunds shorting companies that employ us peasants sure as hell does.
alangibson 6y ago
I was thinking more about being able to trade online, not GME specifically. TBH 'protocols not platforms' has become kind of a slogan lately, but history doesn't make it look too promising. Email is a protocol, but it has largely been dominated by Google. A really compelling product can capture a protocol.
- soperj 6y ago
  Realistically though nothing at this moment can supplant gmail without people willing to move away from gmail. They make it hard for people to do their own thing because they spam filter out legitimate email coming from domains that they don't like.
- m-chrzan 6y ago
  Could it be that people are just so used to platforms, that even in the case of the email protocol, they prefer to jump onto the Gmail platform that abstracts away from the protocol and provides a nice, easy to use platform? If so, "protocols, not platforms" remains justified, and proponents might hope that as people get more comfortable with protocols, they will drift away not only from the Facebooks and Twitters of the world, but also the Gmails. For me personally, even if we end up with large players offering the largest (presumably most product-focused) instances of various protocols (Gmail with email, imagine Tiwtter hosting the largest Mastodon instance, Discord providing Matrix hosting), the fact I have the freedom to federate and set up my own instance or pay a smaller provider that will respect my privacy, is still a much better situation than the current "platforms, no protocols".

sebmellen 6y ago

There was a relevant document posted earlier today at this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942632. "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (2019)" Article subtitle: > Altering the internet's economic and digital infrastructure to promote free speech I am somewhat skeptical of crypto, but I do hope that the DeFi ecosystem, 20 years in the future, will act as a democratizing force for financial markets.

zionic 6y ago
DeFi is a core component of my ETH bull hypothesis. All this decentralized activity requires the purchase of ETH to pay for/transact on.
- docmars 6y ago
  I'm skeptical of the idea that availability of decentralized services should be dependent on the activity of a market driving it. If for some reason, something unfavorable were to happen with that market, the services tied to it would be in jeopardy. That seems like a terrifying point of failure to have, unless I'm misunderstanding how it works. Perhaps a parallel here is: if the fiat markets are struggling, then small businesses may struggle and lack the business they need to sustain themselves due to economic fears and self-preservation, but that business can exist in some form without the market through free trade or other means of currency or agreements to provide products and services, not beholden to the mercy of a volatile, inaccessible digital system that the vast majority of people don't understand very well.
- SEJeff 6y ago
  Solana seems like a better fit for DeFi than ETH. It is also much higher performance, which is very important for DeFi. Disclaimer: I don't hold solana or ETH.
- sushisource 6y ago
  It requires some way to fund it, but that needn't necessarily be ETH. It also well could be, and they have first mover advantage. But, and it's a big but, I think the most important thing people who know much about crypto forget is: Other people are not like you. Most people have still never even heard of Etherium. Most people won't touch something like that without explicit approval from a government. Which, obviously, is somewhat contrary to the point. I think the real long term (20+ years) winners in this space will gracefully marry the old world with the new, until society has gotten used to these concepts and we can slowly deprecate some of the centralization.

daenz 6y ago

At the risk of sounding like an "I told you so" type of person, it is frustrating to speak out and see others speak out about future consequences of these kinds of actions, only to be drowned out by people liberally applying the slippery slope fallacy argument.

thisiscorrect 6y ago
I've never understood how a slippery slope argument is a fallacy, let alone a logical fallacy (like false syllogism or no true scotsman). The idea is essentially looking at current trends and extrapolating into the future. No prediction is necessarily correct, but it's not necessarily wrong either.
- krapp 6y ago
  A slippery slope argument assumes the maximum degenerate outcome of sliding down the slope as a certainty, that no one will be able to correct for, mitigate or reverse the slide when it starts. That's what makes it a fallacy - it's a thought terminating cliche meant to eliminate the possibility of nuance, as any middle ground is implicitly part of the slope. Otherwise, it's just an argument that risk exists, which is obvious and uninteresting.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    Slippery slope is a valid political tactic for those outside the Overton window.
    - krapp 6y ago
      It's effective, because markets (including the marketplace of ideas) are irrational and bad faith tactics are often more effective at influencing people (at least in the short term) than reason and verifiable fact. I wouldn't consider it valid, though.
      - ttt0 6y ago

yters 6y ago

Well, once the gov cracks down on ISPs game over. No way we can have a grassroots internet without the ISPs.

echelon 6y ago

Every time I mention this on Hacker News, I get downvoted by the neoliberal fascists that want to suppress the speech they feel comfortable with silencing. Free speech is only free if we allow all of it. Americans have thick skin. It's in our culture. We've accomplished so much in spite of internal disagreement and oppression: voting rights, women's rights, gay marriage (which still isn't enshrined in the constitution -- work to be done!) Imagine if we froze back in the 50's because we didn't have free speech. Pick any point in the timeline and freeze the American experiment. It will lead to a worse outcome. I can tolerate some idiots with racist hate flags, Westboro funeral protests, etc. Because the freedom we enjoy is worth so much more than their minor nuisance. edit: Yep, predictably downvoted. Go move to another country that isn't America so you don't have to listen to people you disagree with.

theptip 6y ago
> I get downvoted by the neoliberal fascists You might get fewer downvotes if you followed the HN rules, particularly "be nice". Also, in polite conversation, preemptively calling your fellow conversation partners fascists is a good way to get off on the wrong foot.
- throwaway2381 6y ago
  While I agree with your main point re name calling, it's absolutely not true that you get fewer downvotes if you follow HN's written rules. There are also unwritten groupthink (for lack of a better phrase) rules for which you _will_ get downvoted for. I don't have many controversial opinions but sometimes they are outside the generally accepted "truths".
- mnglkhn2 6y ago
  since when "free speech" means to be nice?! what a tool :)
SR2Z 6y ago
> Go move to another country that isn't America so you don't have to listen to people you disagree with. Wew lad. Also do you actually know what a neoliberal is?

treeman79 6y ago

Maybe make Protecting free speech part our governments highest law. Maybe we could amend the law. Seriously. Lots of people love to dump on the constitution as old and not relevant. But it’s meant to restrict government and protect people’s freedom.

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
B-but what if people say mean things? :/
- chaos986 6y ago
  That's part of the Sophie's Choice. If we have private owned social media, then they will moderate according to public opinion. If we have us government run social media then we have no moderation at all because 1st amendment applies only to us government. So is it morally allowable to discuss <abhorrent topic> online? Should it be law to allow or disallow <abhorrent topic>? Who decides what the majority of people consider to be abhorrent?
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    I think you central questions it the most important one, but the dichotomy between private and public is forced. A phone company is not forced to moderate the communication of its clients.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      I don't believe parent said they were forced, only that they would do it. And that makes sense, since their desire is to minimize damage to their brand. There is a simple solution to this if you don't like the way they behave: stop using their product, and recommend others do the same. Of course, your not using it doesn't prevent others from using it if they want to, but that's freedom of choice for you.
      - 6y ago

gameswithgo 6y ago

What is your hope for reforming the ability of a single person to keep repeating a lie and nearly causing an insurrection?

alangibson 6y ago
I wouldn't say 'nearly'. The Capitol Riot definitely fit the standard definition of an insurrection. Your 'single person' straw man aside, I don't think the conduits of conversation are the right place to attack this problem. It's just far too risky to have utterly unaccountable businesses be in the business of policing what people say. I have the radical opinion that the police should be doing the policing. If people are criming online (threats of violence, planning to overthrow the government), they should get a visit from The Law.
preommr 6y ago
That it should be up to congress and law enforcement - people that are accountable to the public, to make these rules. Everything about what twitter did was stupid. They let him talk for years, and then finally stopped him at the worst time. They cancelled him when there was little more damage he could do and ruined ideas of free speech neutrality and it allowed his ilk to claim censorship and it helped with making him a martyr. Just absolute stupidity. Letting corporations deal with dangerous thought leaders is not a solution that has even the slimmest chance of working.
- alangibson 6y ago
  It's really hard not to think that Twitter's timing had alot to do with their stock price. It's hard to boot the user driving the most engagement on your platform.
chrisco255 6y ago
Voter fraud happened. There's video evidence of it occurring in State Farm Arena in Fulton County, GA. There's forensic evidence of 70% failure rates on voting machines in Antirim County, Michigan. There's 1000+ witness affidavits signed and presented under the penalty of perjury in various legislatures around the country. There's also statistical fraud detection algorithms that have numerous red flags with regards to the 2020 election. Repeating the lie that claims of fraud are unsubstantiated is the real problem. We have a broken, hackable electoral system with systemic issues.

worker767424 6y ago

Throwing this out there, too: assorted government restrictions and lockdowns imposed by regional public health officials. The early ones were more justified because we knew less, but as the pandemic drug on, the burden of proof justifying closures needed to increase, and legislators needed to step up and legitimize the policies. It's like how the president can wage war for 90 days, but then has to get approval from congress.

engineer_22 6y ago
I'm with you on this. It's shameful that Congress and State Legislatures have abdicated power to executive functionaries indefinitely. We're closing in on D-Day+1 year and our deliberative bodies have yet to deliberate our public health policies (although Congress has proven they can stimulate demand for consumer goods, from time to time).
8ytecoder 6y ago
Especially in states like California. My rich friends can and continue to travel. My friends in the service sector are at home collecting a meager unemployment. It doesn’t jibe well with the ethos CA proudly proclaims. They shutdown outdoor dining and even playgrounds while Costco, Amazon warehouses and Best Buy can be packed. We also know and have data that masks work but salons were closed. (A case in Texas comes to mind where a barber had covid but didn’t pass it to any of the 45 clients because they wore masks). What was way more important was good ventilation and indoor masking. In general social psychology have to be factored in as well. Anecdotally speaking, shutting down outdoor dining pushed more people to party at home.
- Bud 6y ago
  No, we don't have data that masks are protective in a salon situation where people are in close contact for a long time. I wouldn't trust the masks that most people are using (surgical masks with half-inch gaps on either side and quarter-inch gaps around the nose, or single-layer cloth masks) to protect me in that scenario.
  - 6y ago

tima101 6y ago

I hope that these events make more people put their savings and time into their own projects instead of bitcoin and stocks.

worik 6y ago
...and stop the idea that you can make money by being a smart investor. It is possible. It is possible to make money buying lottery tickets too. The best way to make money is to work for it. Yet because of a demand for profit and return on investment working people are getting squeezed with low wages and bad conditions. Outrage at a invest platform doing some thing or another - I do not care about that. My outrage is at low wages and bad conditions for ordinary working people

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols. I don’t have much hope for this, mainly because being the owner of a platform is much more profitable than being one of many protocol end points. Look at git. It is hard to think of a more open protocol, and yet GitHub absolutely dominates and it is a big deal if they decide to cut off your repo. A better alternative is for government to fund and operate critical infrastructure or at least heavily regulate it. I don’t have to worry that I will get deplatformed from mail, because the USPS is there and they have strict legal requirements prohibiting them from deplatforming people. I don’t have to worry that I won’t be deplatformed from roads, because most roads are operated by the government, which is under strict legal precedents that they can’t deplatform me. It is similar with utilities such as electricity, water, gas which are privately operated but heavily regulated. Some of the internet infrastructure is both becoming more vital as has economies of scale such that there is an inherent drive for consolidation. As such, I think it is becoming time that such things be regulated like utilities.

engineer_22 6y ago
Is EFF doing the work to advocate for responsible regulation? Is there an alternative to EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation) that is more in line with the spirit of your comment?
bananabreakfast 6y ago
You are using the term "deplatform" completely wrong. None of the things you mention are platforms. Mail is not a platform. Roads are not a platform. Electricity, water and gas are not platforms. These are all examples of point to point connection. None of them allow you to reach millions of people unfederated. If you start sending out illegal hate mail to millions of people, you bet you'll be "deplatformed" by the USPS. They will cut off your account and probably press charges.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > If you start sending out illegal hate mail to millions of people, you bet you'll be "deplatformed" by the USPS. If you start sending out legal harassment mail to millions of people, you'll get a discount.

8ytecoder 6y ago

I’m less into the free speech component. I think companies should have the right to curate a community they see fit. What I do care about is moving to protocols and data portability. I want the ability to switch to another provider if I’m not happy with their decisions. I absolutely don’t like my data being held hostage. I also hope this realization extends to things like GMail which hasn’t yet seen a similar scrutiny

at-fates-hands 6y ago

Robinhood was just hit with class action lawsuit over this: The financial trading app Robinhood is been hit with a federal class action lawsuit after it restricted trades to stocks popular on the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets, sending Redditors and app users into a meltdown. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on Thursday, alleges that the app “purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock ‘GME’ from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock rise, thereby deprived [sic] retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/robinhood-hit-with-class-action-after-trying-to-shut-down-wallstreetbets-gamestop-uprising https://www.thedailybeast.com/robinhood-hit-with-class-actio...

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

I think calling for violence then carrying out actual violence is a bit different than this. But yes, it's like these giants now have a taste for deplatforming and are liberally applying it now.

MuffinFlavored 6y ago

I'm not optimistic an "open-source brokerage" will ever exist. Barrier to entry is probably too high/impossible to overcome. Big hedge funds would just flat out refuse your orders or prioritize them at garbage levels.

riedel 6y ago

I think it is perfectly normal that major parts of ones life can be turned off by intermediaries. It is just that they have been become rather abstract and difficult to yell at.

drewcon 6y ago

Yeah I can't wait to live in a world where we enable more financial market mobbing by the uninformed and emotional masses. What could go wrong? Tune will change when RSUs and 401ks get effected.

leesalminen 6y ago
I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of people I know don’t have RSUs nor 401ks.
- drewcon 6y ago
  About 1/3 of Americans have a 401k. The RSU snipe was just for the orange website crowd.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

KirillPanov 6y ago

Never going to happen as long as people insist that stuff works on their walled-garden cellphone. Cellphone lockdowns are the keystone here. There are sensible arguments for cellphones being walled gardens (grandmas can't defend their phone against malware, etc), but this is the devil's bargain you have to accept. As long as people (a) want everything on their cellphone and (b) want it to be locked-down enough that they can trust it to not listen in on them and stalk their location, everything downstream of the cellphone will be intermediated.

vineyardmike 6y ago
Nah, i have tons of open-protocol stuff on my cell phone. And i could make more (with some time and my technical knowledge) if i wanted/needed. It would be nice if it was easier to enter/exit the garden at will, sure, but thats not the same thing. I'm technically competent but these systems are so complex i don't think i could defend against malware in a complete open system. Actually, they're so complex that i do not think its possible to completely defend against malware as an end user without serious changes to behavior that is undesirable to most (eg. stop download apps so freely)

eternalban 6y ago

At this rate, they will red pill everyone with a pulse. It's a good thing (/s alert) that we have legislative solution in the pipeline just in time to address the inevitable social consequences.

Zigurd 6y ago

This isn't All One Thing. It isn't even all one thing inside the Robin Hood/Gamestop thing. Wall Street Bets got banned on Discord for calls to violent action, on the one hand, and their bets got throttled on Robin Hood because Robin Hood's data customers, who are legal-ishly front-running Robin Hood users, do not like what Robin Hood users are legal-ishly doing.

breakfastduck 6y ago

I actually think you are sadly wrong with that hope, as much as I also wish it were true. Unfortunately, many people (sadly including the far left, who 10 years ago I would have called myself part of) & the media are actively celebrating these blocks and shutdowns because it serves their ideology. For now.

balls187 6y ago

I just ran through a thought experiment--if Google (gmail) Apple (my phone) and Tmobile (the current owners of my number) all simultaneously nuked me, could I recover? Luckily yes. Online access would be hindered, but nearly all my financial resources are handled through a local credit union.

asenna 6y ago
Even better - having savings in a crypto hardware wallet :)
- balls187 6y ago
  That seems like that would potentially stave off government locking off access, which is where I am most vulnerable. I'm not in fear of the government seizing my assets, but I don't trust Google not to lock me out due to an algorithm run amok, or Tmobile giving my number away due to simple social engineering (that actually happened). Apple I trust.

subsubzero 6y ago

I agree, instead of the original idea of the internet being a utopia of free speech, decentralization and free trade, it has devolved into a place where a select few oligarchies reign supreme pushing their views and actions onto the billions of users forced into their monopolies. Laws do not apply to them and even when they break their own TOS there are no repercussions. A strong digital rights for users is a good start, but I think the end goal is that they(the tech monopolies) are essential utilities for a majority of the world and should be regulated as such. A CEO should not be able to silence a democratically elected leader from a communications platform(congress or a govt. communications committee should decide), users should be able to buy the stock of their choosing(the SEC can decide to halt trading pending illegal behavior) and not have that right removed by a companies CEO.

974373493200 6y ago

> My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols. I hope so too and I hope that movement will develop and adopt technological solutions and not advocate for government force. This is an opportunity for people to control their means of communication and create a more robust internet that can better withstand censorship attempts in the future. I fear it will instead be taken advantage of by people who want to increase government control perhaps to prevent competition with the currently dominant actors on the market. Any further normalization of government control of communication or the internet must be resisted if we are to have any chance to keep the truly wonderful thing that the internet is today, despite all its imperfections.

chaostheory 6y ago

This should help kickstart a new decentralization movement.

chemmail 6y ago

That assumes people can see past Friday, not happening.

inopinatus 6y ago

Alternative take; the following are not major parts of your life: > Robinhood, Parler, Twitter, Reddit (et cetera) but represent trivial ephemera whose significance for the individual, following abandonment/deletion, vanishes into hindsight once the endowment effect and separation anxiety wears off.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

I don't think any of the services you've cited are considered "major" services by any stretch of the imagination.

Majestic121 6y ago
Yes, they are considered major services by a lot of people.

g9yuayon 6y ago

I doubt it. Robinhood is now citing misinformation as the reason to "protect its users". Misinformation and disinformation are really the weapons of mass destruction. Cite it, and you get your superpower. Twitter does it. FB does it. Media, oh media loves it. So, what's wrong with Robinhood again?

ck2 6y ago

I'm still wondering when we are going to get neighborhood-wide and then chained mesh wifi networks that bypass ISPs I know that exists in pieces and small projects but it's not like more than a few dozen people in any town even can fathom what that is or why it's a good idea. Google and Apple would never do this but imagine if every smartphone came not only with built in mesh-wifi ability but was on by default so it all acted as a repeater, you could probably communicate across entire states and countries given enough seconds like store-and-forward and ham radio-like solutions.