Even without shutting off the internet, couldn't governments crush crypto by making it illegal to buy or transfer? Countries could do this simultaneously.
That would effectively stop ~99% of the affected populations from using it, no?
What's the counterargument to this possibility? It seems to hinge on getting too big to ban.
Based on that, they use Google, Apple, Twilio and AWS in the backend. All who have shown they are willing to deplatform with little notice as the result of kneejerk public pressure.
How easily can Signal replace those dependencies if this comes for them?
How do you know that's the reason and not that they legitimately wanted to have a vineyard? They don't tend to it and harvest from it? All the ones I've seen looked to be in use, but don't know for sure.
It also doesn't make sense because terrorists would obviously be using encrypted channels primarily, not some shabby public plain text forum. And most organization would be on Facebook, with orders of magnitude more users and better tools.
The whole thing is such a terrible, short-sighted justification. The logic being used is setting a precedent to ban or backdoor any encrypted non-moderated form of communication. e.g., Signal and Telegram.
> Do you think there's a problem with the way technology has enabled the scale and precision of disinformation campaigns? If so, do you have any ideas what we can do about it?
Better education. Especially with regard to critical thinking skills.
Even if we removed the Internet, there would still be disinformation and propaganda that the population would have to contend with. Be it from the media, politicians, governments, books, friends, family, etc. Just as there always has been.
So I think the more comprehensive and sustainable approach would be to upgrade brains. Teach critical thinking and philosophy from a young age.
> Do you think there should be any moderation whatsoever? In other words, should people be allowed to incite, advocate, and organize violence in public forums? If not, where is the line? If so, what's remedies do we have as a society to the subsequent violence?
I'm absolutely for moderation on public forums. They are better for it. And by default they have to remove illegal content at least. Beyond that, it's up to them what the moderation policies are. HN is an example where I think moderation is really well done.
This gets a lot harder for platforms that are the de-facto town square like FB and Twitter. I don't know how we should handle that yet. But I think they should mostly stick with removing illegal content and act like a common carrier. If that's a problem due to the nature of social media, then maybe we should revisit the laws of the land. The fundamental issue here is having a few tech giants with a high level of control over the nation's discourse and who optimize for engagement (e.g., outrage, anger, bias confirmation). Which is fueling a lot of hate in the first place. They're not optimizing for thoughtful conversation and interaction. Not even remotely.
I'd also explore some other kinds of governance. Maybe an external non-partisan committee or a crypto governance approach. Not sure, but something external from these platform holders is key I think.
Check back when Bernie (or the next Bernie, if he doesn't run again) is deplatformed, and we'll see who was confused.
Just remember back to how the media and establishment pulled together to stop Bernie during the primaries. Think this new tool won't be used the next time they're in danger of losing power to an outsider?
Jack's world would be decentralized Twitter, Signal and Bitcoin. That's what he's pushing for and putting resources into.