5 ms·

I really hope I'm missing something very obvious but contra this line from the article "verifiable ownership via blockchain (and not by a central authority)", t

I really hope I'm missing something very obvious but contra this line from the article "verifiable ownership via blockchain (and not by a central authority)", this seems like yet another case where we will mostly just trust a centralized authority (twitter) to "show the right NFTs belonging to the right owners" on their own pages. Surely it is still possible to verify ownership, but who's going to do that? Won't people just go "oh hexagon, cool, it's an NFT, seems legit cuz Twitter is legit"? I don't mean anything particular for or against Twitter or NFTs here, this just seems like a completely uninteresting use of blockchain.

coolso 5y ago
> this just seems like a completely uninteresting use of blockchain. You don’t understand how blue checkmarks make their owners feel. To them they are changing the world one smarmy tweet at a time. Blue checkmarks validate everything they say since it is a privilege bestowed upon them by giant corporation Twitter themselves. The new blue hex is just that, but in keeping with the times.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I'm not sure that's really fair. But, yes, there are people who are fairly well known in their little corner of the Internet and take it as a personal affront if Twitter won't give them a blue check. (From what I can tell, the checks are mostly for politicians, major journalists, and mainstream celebrities.)
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I still don't understand why Tinder and Bumble and other dating sites will let any user verify their humanity and yet Twitter won't. I think it would get rid of so much of its spam problem if it just let anyone verify their account, and didn't play these popularity games with blue checks.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I don't really understand it either. I've even had my account spoofed by another account (which Twitter killed after I reported it). And I do a fair bit of writing for publications but Twitter still wouldn't verify me.
      - jimkleiber 5y ago
        So I learned the history of the blue check came from Tony LaRussa's account being spoofed and he sued them and then they created the verified blue check concept. I think it may be one of the strongest legal arguments for them to do it. And also an easy way for them to combat bots without having to admit all the fake accounts on their platform. I wrote a whole essay on it during a hackathon in SF: https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verify-more-users-towards-a-more-human-web-9b7975aac414 https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verif...
        ghaff 5y ago
        Certainly spoofing and other forms of impersonation are the reason. But saying that only relatively famous people deserve proactive protection doesn't strike me as a great look. Yes, well-known people are more likely to be targeted and the effects are likely to be greater but I'm not sure that's a justification for withholding verification from everyone else.
        jimkleiber 5y ago
        The effects are also more likely to be noticeable if impersonating someone famous, whereas easier to skate by if the person is not famous so I agree that they should enable it for all. I don't get it either why they're holding back. I'm at some point where I want someone to make a twitter like platform with mostly if not exclusively verified people, I hope twitter does it but I doubt it, so I hope someone else will. I can get really tired of interacting with people wearing masks or people wearing masks of other people's faces.
eropple 5y ago
> Won't people just go "oh hexagon, cool, it's an NFT, seems legit cuz Twitter is legit"? Most folks in my neck of the woods seem amped up to block them on sight instead of going “cool”.
- gdulli 5y ago
  Or: https://www.twitter.com/wwwdotyoutube/status/1484456646281773060 https://www.twitter.com/wwwdotyoutube/status/148445664628177...
choward 5y ago
I was expecting to find at least one legitimate argument for NFTs but of course did not. NFTs are such a joke. If someone copies your NFT what are you going to do about it? The only thing you can do is cry to a centralized government to enforce it.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  And that’s not mentioning the entire business of making an inherently abundant digital asset into a scarce one.
  - xkapastel 5y ago
    The media file is still abundant! What's scarce is the signature.
gitfan86 5y ago
The awkward piece is that copyright laws are enforceable. You don't own a picture unless you own the copyright. Eventually someone will buy an NFT, get it verified by Twitter and then have it taken down because they don't own the copyright.
- enkid 5y ago
  There's a lot of copyright breaking NFTs that are being sold that are a complete legal mess and one of these "artists" is going to be slapped with a lawsuit soon.
- LoveMortuus 5y ago
  Yup, this is bound to happen sooner or later, because nothing about NFTs is legally binding. From what I understand (which isn't much) you could even mint your own NFT that has the same image as another NFT but since the underlying address is different, you won't be prevented from doing so.
  - andrewxhill 5y ago
    If you're curious about how folks are exploring legal intersection with smart contracts, you might find the work of https://www.lexdao.coop/ https://www.lexdao.coop/ interesting (US focused mostly for now afaik).
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      Let's see: the front page is blank with "Join Us" and "Book a Consultation". The blog is dank memes of Crypto Chads and some bullshit on how crypto is great. Yes, yes, so much interesting.
      - andrewxhill 5y ago
        I said curious not dismissive. When people don't communicate like you it doesn't mean their ideas are bad.
bertil 5y ago
The idea of making a validation publicly visible on social media is a good idea (many people had suggested having medical profressional in the last two years). The idea to leverage a blockchain for that could make sense (I’m still to see a good example of that, but) say, to can connect your profile to an account that holds a certain quantity of a certain coin to confirm your commitment. The issue with that implementation, and NFTs in general, is that you are committing not to an exclusive representation of any digital asset, but to a link to an asset. Representing that is like tatooing a logo: sure, it shows your commitment to Harry-Potter to have the Deathly Hallows thing on your forearm but… Doesn’t prove you’ve written the thing. Or read it. Just like you want people to assume that you have. Any blockchain can independently mint the same images, or even fork an existing one and re-attribute all key assets to any wallet. The later wouldn’t be available on OpenSea or MetaMask but you can find a chain that would, there’s no current implementation that would detect near replica. That’s kind of the problem with total decentralisation: you can’t trust anyone, or prevent anyone from doing anything, unless you have strict control of your partners. And connecting that to existing key platforms would assume a new oligarchy.

coolso 5y ago

> this just seems like a completely uninteresting use of blockchain. You don’t understand how blue checkmarks make their owners feel. To them they are changing the world one smarmy tweet at a time. Blue checkmarks validate everything they say since it is a privilege bestowed upon them by giant corporation Twitter themselves. The new blue hex is just that, but in keeping with the times.

ghaff 5y ago
I'm not sure that's really fair. But, yes, there are people who are fairly well known in their little corner of the Internet and take it as a personal affront if Twitter won't give them a blue check. (From what I can tell, the checks are mostly for politicians, major journalists, and mainstream celebrities.)
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I still don't understand why Tinder and Bumble and other dating sites will let any user verify their humanity and yet Twitter won't. I think it would get rid of so much of its spam problem if it just let anyone verify their account, and didn't play these popularity games with blue checks.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I don't really understand it either. I've even had my account spoofed by another account (which Twitter killed after I reported it). And I do a fair bit of writing for publications but Twitter still wouldn't verify me.
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      So I learned the history of the blue check came from Tony LaRussa's account being spoofed and he sued them and then they created the verified blue check concept. I think it may be one of the strongest legal arguments for them to do it. And also an easy way for them to combat bots without having to admit all the fake accounts on their platform. I wrote a whole essay on it during a hackathon in SF: https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verify-more-users-towards-a-more-human-web-9b7975aac414 https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verif...
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Certainly spoofing and other forms of impersonation are the reason. But saying that only relatively famous people deserve proactive protection doesn't strike me as a great look. Yes, well-known people are more likely to be targeted and the effects are likely to be greater but I'm not sure that's a justification for withholding verification from everyone else.
        jimkleiber 5y ago
        The effects are also more likely to be noticeable if impersonating someone famous, whereas easier to skate by if the person is not famous so I agree that they should enable it for all. I don't get it either why they're holding back. I'm at some point where I want someone to make a twitter like platform with mostly if not exclusively verified people, I hope twitter does it but I doubt it, so I hope someone else will. I can get really tired of interacting with people wearing masks or people wearing masks of other people's faces.

eropple 5y ago

> Won't people just go "oh hexagon, cool, it's an NFT, seems legit cuz Twitter is legit"? Most folks in my neck of the woods seem amped up to block them on sight instead of going “cool”.

gdulli 5y ago
Or: https://www.twitter.com/wwwdotyoutube/status/1484456646281773060 https://www.twitter.com/wwwdotyoutube/status/148445664628177...

choward 5y ago

I was expecting to find at least one legitimate argument for NFTs but of course did not. NFTs are such a joke. If someone copies your NFT what are you going to do about it? The only thing you can do is cry to a centralized government to enforce it.

rbanffy 5y ago
And that’s not mentioning the entire business of making an inherently abundant digital asset into a scarce one.
- xkapastel 5y ago
  The media file is still abundant! What's scarce is the signature.

gitfan86 5y ago

The awkward piece is that copyright laws are enforceable. You don't own a picture unless you own the copyright. Eventually someone will buy an NFT, get it verified by Twitter and then have it taken down because they don't own the copyright.

enkid 5y ago
There's a lot of copyright breaking NFTs that are being sold that are a complete legal mess and one of these "artists" is going to be slapped with a lawsuit soon.
LoveMortuus 5y ago
Yup, this is bound to happen sooner or later, because nothing about NFTs is legally binding. From what I understand (which isn't much) you could even mint your own NFT that has the same image as another NFT but since the underlying address is different, you won't be prevented from doing so.
- andrewxhill 5y ago
  If you're curious about how folks are exploring legal intersection with smart contracts, you might find the work of https://www.lexdao.coop/ https://www.lexdao.coop/ interesting (US focused mostly for now afaik).
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    Let's see: the front page is blank with "Join Us" and "Book a Consultation". The blog is dank memes of Crypto Chads and some bullshit on how crypto is great. Yes, yes, so much interesting.
    - andrewxhill 5y ago
      I said curious not dismissive. When people don't communicate like you it doesn't mean their ideas are bad.

bertil 5y ago

The idea of making a validation publicly visible on social media is a good idea (many people had suggested having medical profressional in the last two years). The idea to leverage a blockchain for that could make sense (I’m still to see a good example of that, but) say, to can connect your profile to an account that holds a certain quantity of a certain coin to confirm your commitment. The issue with that implementation, and NFTs in general, is that you are committing not to an exclusive representation of any digital asset, but to a link to an asset. Representing that is like tatooing a logo: sure, it shows your commitment to Harry-Potter to have the Deathly Hallows thing on your forearm but… Doesn’t prove you’ve written the thing. Or read it. Just like you want people to assume that you have. Any blockchain can independently mint the same images, or even fork an existing one and re-attribute all key assets to any wallet. The later wouldn’t be available on OpenSea or MetaMask but you can find a chain that would, there’s no current implementation that would detect near replica. That’s kind of the problem with total decentralisation: you can’t trust anyone, or prevent anyone from doing anything, unless you have strict control of your partners. And connecting that to existing key platforms would assume a new oligarchy.