"We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers. We have a word, doxxing, for inflicting that exposure on someone against their will. And now the same governments and platforms are asking every citizen to do it to themselves, voluntarily, as a condition of logging in."
https://t.co/X6mzofcBgA
If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.
This is the wrong take.
Organizations of all sizes get hacked, including every US government agency from the IRS to State Department.
Protecting all data is a Sisyphean task.
Coinbase DOES NOT WANT to have most of this kind of data, it's a huge liability (clearly).
They have it because they are legally required to, by the government.
This is just one of the dark consequences of state-enforced financial surveillance.
KYC *is* the crime.
It is essential to democracy that individuals be allowed to have open discussions about politics.
This move by EU regulators is clear, unlawful retaliation for allowing an open discussion for all to hear. The people of Europe should have the freedom to make up their own minds, rather than have EU bureaucrats control political debate.
There is no surrogate to X in having this open discussion.
Disinformation is indeed rampant online, but the antidote to it isn't censorship.
The antidote is teaching and promoting critical thinking skills at a deep societal level.
The Belgian version of chat control is nothing but mass surveillance. It’s what the Going Dark initiative call “setting the right narrative”. But the consequences are the same. It’s client-side scanning (state spyware in your phone) of European citizens’ private communication.
Let’s be clear. 'Upload Moderation' is a mass surveillance program.
We urge EU governments to reject mass scanning of their citizens' communications by voting against this proposal tomorrow.
People think ChatControl is about specific crimes. No, that’s not what’s at stake. What’s being made is an architecture decision for how private messaging systems work : if it passes, by law these systems will be wired for mass surveillance. This can be used for any purpose.
📣Official statement: the new EU chat controls proposal for mass scanning is the same old surveillance with new branding.
Whether you call it a backdoor, a front door, or “upload moderation” it undermines encryption & creates significant vulnerabilities
https://t.co/g0xNNKqquA
Solana community is certainly pro-crypto and pro-decentralization
Ethereum community OTOH is pro-*autonomy* and understands that decentralization is a necessary but not sufficient condition for autonomy
"Decentralization" is the broad distribution of a system's intrinsic/accepted forms of power, protecting users against arbitrary exercises of power from the recognized legitimate 'authorities' within the system's logic (e.g., validators).
"Autonomy" is the system's resistance against extrinsic/unaccepted forms of power, protecting users against all exercises of power from authorities outside the system's logic (e.g., government authorities).
Open-source code, moneyness of L1 token, social-layer decentralization/pluralism, and a culture ruthlessly united against censorship are also key parts of autonomy. Decentralization is not enough.
Toly implicitly seems to understand this as he always comes back to USAF as the ultimate bulwark of security--yet when talking about censorship resistance always seems to revert back to 'number of boxes is all that matters', which is the part of Solana design philosophy/culture I just can't really accept (maybe I'm misunderstanding something?).
outside of the leadership of mert/toly and a few others, many lower down in Solana seem totally okay with source-unavailable (no less non-open-source) code and other trust maximization points, whereas this attitude is less common* in Ethereum--this seems to be the kernel of truth in some statements like "solana is less decentralized" (albeit that's an improper way of expressing the issue--the real issue is with autonomy)
tbh though Ethereum culture is also in danger of losing its lead on some of these more intangible autonomy maximization points ....recent stuff like the EigenLayer conflicts of interest, the anti-memecoin moralizing, the gradual creep of "censorship is okay at the app layer", everyone just being okay with validators obeying OFAC sanctions, the embrace of 'business source licenses',' etc. is all eroding every meaningful lead Ethereum could claim on facilitating autonomy...
the biggest risk to Ethereum is not Solana; in theory, they are pursing fairly different designs based on fairly different world philosophies (Solana much more trusting/optimistic of 'social truth' and power of Western democratic governments imo) and should both be successful on their respective bets
the biggest risk to Ethereum is in losing its core values and thus failing to be a unique (cohesively opinionated) bet on what is needed for the future...need to really focus on the self-sovereignty and censorship resistance narratives imo...this is where the edge is & the source of highest value for cryptosystems imo . . .
Privacy is normal.
Living in a surveillance state in which the government demands to watch everything we do with our money at all times without obtaining a warrant is NOT normal.
Treating software developers who build privacy-preserving technology as criminals is reprehensible.
This is why I fundamentally disagree with the "no decision is also a decision - whatever we decide, it should be deliberate" argument put forward by leading advocates.
Move and don't move choices do not deserve your same consideration.
The baseline in a decentralized network is always "no change", and that's a key feature of the system.
The fact that a lot of people suggest changing the eth issuance curve is okey because "ethereum has always been changing so why ve against it now?" is probably the clearest sign that that making this change would be extremely detrimental. This must stop now or will only het worse
If you want to get back in touch with the cypherpunk ethos that spawned blockchain, just imagine what it looks like in 20 years if we fail.
It's a dystopian world: