11 ms·

It also misses the point for a large class of data relevant to individual safety - if GP gets associated (truly or falsely) with [outrage of the week] and his b

It also misses the point for a large class of data relevant to individual safety - if GP gets associated (truly or falsely) with [outrage of the week] and his buddy from HS recognizes the username, what happens when said buddy posts his address (or his kid's school address?) to an immutable data store. GP is a monster and the law isn't doing anything, we gotta take matters into our own hands!

malermeister 5y ago
There's a lot of things this misses. It also completely misses the point on stuff like CP. I know CP is bad and I have no interest in seeing it. However, I do also know that there is a group of people out there that do want to see it. Is the "anti-censorship" approach to just "shine a light on it" and let those people watch CP that's on the immutable data store? This whole post doesn't just assume that people are by default good, it assumes that there are no bad people. That's the only scenario in which the proposed "solution" would work. Personally, that's not a bet I'm willing to make, or even entertain.
- rglover 5y ago
  Right. If you can see it, you can catch it. If you push them further and further into obscurity, you're less likely to catch it. You're increasing the chances that it happens by censoring it, not reducing the chances.
  - newbie789 5y ago
    This is such a hilarious take. Your argument is literally that making child pornography undeletable, this will result in less child porn? What are your thoughts on ‘forever chemicals’ like Teflon that are permanently in virtually every human’s blood stream? Does this mean that Dow Chemical will uh… fix it? Or whatever?
  - malermeister 5y ago
    It's not only you that can catch it. It's all other people too. Yes, you decrease your chance to shut down one individual perpetrator, but you also limit that one perpetrator's reach and they can't do as much harm. It's the same thing as any other infectious disease, really. If you don't do any covid prevention and hang out with a bunch of unvaccinated people in close quarters, you're more likely to find out if somebody had covid, but at the cost of potentially infecting everyone. This is about reducing harm by reducing infections. Your argument boils down to "oh well, now there's CP forever accessible because its on this immutable data store, but at least we now know that somebody wanted to post CP".
    - rglover 5y ago
      > This is about reducing harm by reducing infections. That doesn't make any sense for CP. It's not like people who weren't into that crap before stumble upon it and are like "oh, now this is MY THING." What I'd propose is having a "known bad content" (as flagged by users/operators) list that gives node operators a rating they can filter what they propagate by. For example: if you have A, B, C, and D ratings (A being harmless, D being CP), you'd get a self-policing network because node operators could say "I only host/seed B+ content." Very few people given the choice would even want to seed D-rated content (and if I'm wrong, then we have a much bigger problem at a societal level). It'd be imperfect, but so is blatant censorship. Arguably this approach would help you to find the worst stuff fastest.
      - malermeister 5y ago
        It's not about making people pedophiles, it's about giving existing pedophiles material. Or about exposing people with right-leaning views to more and more extreme content, or whatever the dangerous material in question is. What you are proposing is just censorship with extra steps, it seems to me, where the operators are the censors. What's the point, other than making everything more complicated and difficult to work with?
        rglover 5y ago
        > Where the operators are the censors. In essence. Except it's by consensus, not by decree. That's my personal issue with censorship. One or a few people deciding "this is bad," which starts out with good intentions eventually gets abused and used to subjugate groups of people. In this design, it's voluntary. You can be on the network, but that doesn't mean your stuff will be propagated.

malermeister 5y ago

There's a lot of things this misses. It also completely misses the point on stuff like CP. I know CP is bad and I have no interest in seeing it. However, I do also know that there is a group of people out there that do want to see it. Is the "anti-censorship" approach to just "shine a light on it" and let those people watch CP that's on the immutable data store? This whole post doesn't just assume that people are by default good, it assumes that there are no bad people. That's the only scenario in which the proposed "solution" would work. Personally, that's not a bet I'm willing to make, or even entertain.

rglover 5y ago
Right. If you can see it, you can catch it. If you push them further and further into obscurity, you're less likely to catch it. You're increasing the chances that it happens by censoring it, not reducing the chances.
- newbie789 5y ago
  This is such a hilarious take. Your argument is literally that making child pornography undeletable, this will result in less child porn? What are your thoughts on ‘forever chemicals’ like Teflon that are permanently in virtually every human’s blood stream? Does this mean that Dow Chemical will uh… fix it? Or whatever?
- malermeister 5y ago
  It's not only you that can catch it. It's all other people too. Yes, you decrease your chance to shut down one individual perpetrator, but you also limit that one perpetrator's reach and they can't do as much harm. It's the same thing as any other infectious disease, really. If you don't do any covid prevention and hang out with a bunch of unvaccinated people in close quarters, you're more likely to find out if somebody had covid, but at the cost of potentially infecting everyone. This is about reducing harm by reducing infections. Your argument boils down to "oh well, now there's CP forever accessible because its on this immutable data store, but at least we now know that somebody wanted to post CP".
  - rglover 5y ago
    > This is about reducing harm by reducing infections. That doesn't make any sense for CP. It's not like people who weren't into that crap before stumble upon it and are like "oh, now this is MY THING." What I'd propose is having a "known bad content" (as flagged by users/operators) list that gives node operators a rating they can filter what they propagate by. For example: if you have A, B, C, and D ratings (A being harmless, D being CP), you'd get a self-policing network because node operators could say "I only host/seed B+ content." Very few people given the choice would even want to seed D-rated content (and if I'm wrong, then we have a much bigger problem at a societal level). It'd be imperfect, but so is blatant censorship. Arguably this approach would help you to find the worst stuff fastest.
    - malermeister 5y ago
      It's not about making people pedophiles, it's about giving existing pedophiles material. Or about exposing people with right-leaning views to more and more extreme content, or whatever the dangerous material in question is. What you are proposing is just censorship with extra steps, it seems to me, where the operators are the censors. What's the point, other than making everything more complicated and difficult to work with?
      - rglover 5y ago
        > Where the operators are the censors. In essence. Except it's by consensus, not by decree. That's my personal issue with censorship. One or a few people deciding "this is bad," which starts out with good intentions eventually gets abused and used to subjugate groups of people. In this design, it's voluntary. You can be on the network, but that doesn't mean your stuff will be propagated.