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> How many blatant scams are out there where the founders are using purely euphemistic language & making sure to have short data retention periods (~1 yr is sta

> How many blatant scams are out there where the founders are using purely euphemistic language & making sure to have short data retention periods (~1 yr is standard in businesses.) Our entire society is running on scams where nobody writes anything down, and any inadvertent records are destroyed through very short retention policies. I worked at an agency whose primary reason for revising a data retention policy was to keep things hidden that FOIA requests threatened to reveal. While that goal was mentioned constantly, it was never put in email or any meeting minutes.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago
If only there were a way. Some sort of permaweb, to store important data on an immutable ledger... But alas, the mainstream is busy buying into Bitconnect, Onecoin, Potcoin, PonziCoin (yes, that was a real coin and people lost money when the operator - you won't believe this now - exit scammed them and ran off with the money). And trades them on FTX.
- ffggffggj 4y ago
  That wouldn’t stop someone from entering something into the ledger wrong or fraudulently. Crypto just isn’t a silver bullet, for anything.
  - trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    It's not about preventing lies or making fraud impossible. It's about leaving a clear record of it for use cases where accountability is paramount. The current trust-based system in finance does not work and only aids scammers. Because of all the scams we have auditing and then it's found the auditing firms are fraudulent/corrupt as well. It's fraud all the way down, there is no way to change this because who audits the auditors?
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      I think OP is right. Cryptocurrencies / distributed ledgers / merkle trees literally solve 0 problems of confirming things said in meat space were actually said or done. Additionally, a ledger of facts doesn’t give you the bigger picture of what’s happening. Eg if I’m saying as a CEO that our retention policy is now 3 months, how are you going to use facts to prove that I’m doing this for FOIA? Additionally, even if you think there’s some kind of path where recordings go into the ledge, with deep fakes, that’s a losing proposition. How do you solve this problem? Checks and balances and strong institutions that actively work to remove moral hazards from society AND themselves. Sure, if you weaken institutions and then claim they’re ineffective, you’re just creating self-fulfilling prophecies. In a well-designed system, you don’t need to audit the auditors. Make sure that the auditors are secret and that randomly chosen (ie there’s no incentive to collude with the entity being audited). Provide strong incentives (training, compensatory, social, rewards) and protection (ie people with power going after them / their reputation) for both rooting out corruption/scams and that when they say a business isn’t a scam then it’s most likely not (eg clawbacks on money, prestige, recognition, etc). Additionally, the FBI, IRS and other state and federal law enforcement agencies should be proactively auditing the largest businesses OR outsourcing to very trusted auditors (ie ones for whom the cancellation of the contract would be a death sentence which is easy to enforce by requiring that 100% of revenue for the outsourced agency comes from the federal government and there’s N such agencies that all split the pie so that if one fails and gets corrupt the others take over (the FBI is authorized to have wiretaps and secretly monitor the auditors to ensure there’s no kind of collusion communication happening between auditing agencies (ie we allow leadership in these trusted position to require that you give up more of your rights to be in it and we publish job-relevant details from ~5 years ago without any FOIA battles allowed - only personal details can be omitted and only on-the job details are revealed so no marital secrets). Additionally, anyone caught leaking or losing these records before they are released to the public is punished by getting fired and criminal charges being mandatory. If an audit of the FBI reveals the director is asleep / didn’t properly establish best practices to keep the data in control, the president fires them. Anyway these are all obvious wildly radical ideas and not necessarily possible to implement due to various laws / there may be flaws in the specific details. My overall point still stands. It’s fraud because we let it exist, not because it’s impossible due to human nature / the way society works.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

If only there were a way. Some sort of permaweb, to store important data on an immutable ledger... But alas, the mainstream is busy buying into Bitconnect, Onecoin, Potcoin, PonziCoin (yes, that was a real coin and people lost money when the operator - you won't believe this now - exit scammed them and ran off with the money). And trades them on FTX.

ffggffggj 4y ago
That wouldn’t stop someone from entering something into the ledger wrong or fraudulently. Crypto just isn’t a silver bullet, for anything.
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  It's not about preventing lies or making fraud impossible. It's about leaving a clear record of it for use cases where accountability is paramount. The current trust-based system in finance does not work and only aids scammers. Because of all the scams we have auditing and then it's found the auditing firms are fraudulent/corrupt as well. It's fraud all the way down, there is no way to change this because who audits the auditors?
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    I think OP is right. Cryptocurrencies / distributed ledgers / merkle trees literally solve 0 problems of confirming things said in meat space were actually said or done. Additionally, a ledger of facts doesn’t give you the bigger picture of what’s happening. Eg if I’m saying as a CEO that our retention policy is now 3 months, how are you going to use facts to prove that I’m doing this for FOIA? Additionally, even if you think there’s some kind of path where recordings go into the ledge, with deep fakes, that’s a losing proposition. How do you solve this problem? Checks and balances and strong institutions that actively work to remove moral hazards from society AND themselves. Sure, if you weaken institutions and then claim they’re ineffective, you’re just creating self-fulfilling prophecies. In a well-designed system, you don’t need to audit the auditors. Make sure that the auditors are secret and that randomly chosen (ie there’s no incentive to collude with the entity being audited). Provide strong incentives (training, compensatory, social, rewards) and protection (ie people with power going after them / their reputation) for both rooting out corruption/scams and that when they say a business isn’t a scam then it’s most likely not (eg clawbacks on money, prestige, recognition, etc). Additionally, the FBI, IRS and other state and federal law enforcement agencies should be proactively auditing the largest businesses OR outsourcing to very trusted auditors (ie ones for whom the cancellation of the contract would be a death sentence which is easy to enforce by requiring that 100% of revenue for the outsourced agency comes from the federal government and there’s N such agencies that all split the pie so that if one fails and gets corrupt the others take over (the FBI is authorized to have wiretaps and secretly monitor the auditors to ensure there’s no kind of collusion communication happening between auditing agencies (ie we allow leadership in these trusted position to require that you give up more of your rights to be in it and we publish job-relevant details from ~5 years ago without any FOIA battles allowed - only personal details can be omitted and only on-the job details are revealed so no marital secrets). Additionally, anyone caught leaking or losing these records before they are released to the public is punished by getting fired and criminal charges being mandatory. If an audit of the FBI reveals the director is asleep / didn’t properly establish best practices to keep the data in control, the president fires them. Anyway these are all obvious wildly radical ideas and not necessarily possible to implement due to various laws / there may be flaws in the specific details. My overall point still stands. It’s fraud because we let it exist, not because it’s impossible due to human nature / the way society works.