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Dissent does not specify or care how exactly a group is formed, and the sybil/sockpuppetry attack protection it provides is inevitably only as strong as the gro

Dissent does not specify or care how exactly a group is formed, and the sybil/sockpuppetry attack protection it provides is inevitably only as strong as the group formation mechanism. Dissent's accountability guarantee basically means that - unlike most anonymity protocols - it is not any more vulnerable to sybil or sockpuppetry attacks than (say) an otherwise-comparable group communication protocol offering no anonymity. For example, if Dissent is used within a completely closed group setting, in which all members are convinced that all other members are real people and not sockpuppets, then Dissent will guarantee that no real group member will get more than one pseudonym or bandwidth share in any given communication round. At the other end of the spectrum, if Dissent is deployed in a completely open setting that allows anyone to join at any time with no barrier to entry at all, then any user will be able to create sybils or sockpuppets just by joining multiple times, and Dissent offers no sockpuppet protection - but neither would a non-anonymous group communication protocol. More realistically, groups might operate at intermediate levels of openness with different sybil/sockpuppet protection tradeoffs, and Dissent preserves whatever protection that group management mechanism provides. For example, a group might require users to deposit a bitcoin in an escrow account on joining, which they would forfeit if the group later votes that the user is misbehaving and should be banned. Sybil attacks would still be possible but would cost money.

Animats 12y ago
Here's the claim in the article: Unlike other systems, Dissent can guarantee that each user of an online forum gets exactly one bandwidth share, one vote, or one pseudonym, which other users can block in the event of misbehavior. That's a very useful property. We really need something that allows creation of pseudonyms without allowing one party to create lots of them cheaply and spam. Facebook, Yelp, and Wikipedia would be standing in line to buy a technology for that. Unfortunately, Dissent can't do that. All the system really does is guarantee that in an established, stable group, each group member can vote anonymously, but not more than once. That's much less generally useful. It doesn't help with sockpuppets. If you make people pay for a pseudonym/account, that helps, but then you don't need Dissent.

Animats 12y ago

Here's the claim in the article: Unlike other systems, Dissent can guarantee that each user of an online forum gets exactly one bandwidth share, one vote, or one pseudonym, which other users can block in the event of misbehavior. That's a very useful property. We really need something that allows creation of pseudonyms without allowing one party to create lots of them cheaply and spam. Facebook, Yelp, and Wikipedia would be standing in line to buy a technology for that. Unfortunately, Dissent can't do that. All the system really does is guarantee that in an established, stable group, each group member can vote anonymously, but not more than once. That's much less generally useful. It doesn't help with sockpuppets. If you make people pay for a pseudonym/account, that helps, but then you don't need Dissent.