jack's avatar
jack 2 years ago
There are only three truly censorship resistant technologies at scale today: tor, bitcoin, and nostr. All are currently niche…showing most of the world doesn’t actually care about censorship. Granted, these technologies aren’t yet accessible or easy to use. But…they will be!

Replies (110)

PGP is probably a cautionary tale with respect to the expectation that any particular technology becomes accessible/easy to use in time. Maybe things are different now though but you gotta get product designers involved. Engineers will mess it up if they control everything. (I say this as an engineer).
Idk if it meets the "at scale" criteria, but GrapheneOS is available to anyone who wants it. A hardened, open-source, privacy-focused mobile (Android) OS is censorship resistant to the extent it prevents or greatly reduces an individual's attack surface.
Watching closely the Starlink/T-Mobile partnership. Has the potential to be either massively helpful for the surveillance State, or massively destabilizing to it. Praying it is the latter.
Censorship resistant internet access 🤝 censorship resistant money 🤝 censorship resistant social communication. Sadly, most people don't care about these things until they need them or their friends or family needs them. It's up to us to help with education.
.'s avatar
. 2 years ago
666.666666666666
⚡Arvik⚡'s avatar
⚡Arvik⚡ 2 years ago
Sooner the better.... wish everyone would switch to Nostr (thanks for the zap a while back to help with well drilling project👊, still no well but we don't give up ever) I need a point of sale that will let me take visa and Mastercard payments and convert them directly to BTC into my wallet. 🙏 And solar powered BTC node with satellite WiFi for my school bus 🙏
Ilis Trudie's avatar
Ilis Trudie 2 years ago
As a nontechy person, I have been happily slogging my way thru nostr. ☺
Although I haven’t had bad experiences myself with censorship, I’m very happy to be enough interested in doing the work on #Bitcoin and #Nostr. So happy to be part of this important revolution. Thank you to all of you out there who are working and building a better and censorship resistant future!
Incredible that a relatively small group of people with a small set of tools & a common goal have the opportunity to change the entire world for people who may not even understand why it needs to change.
we're tirelessly working on making them more accessible, more reliable, and expand WAY beyond what the captured-internet use cases permit Running towards.
Most people don't believe in censorship yet because they don't have access to quality objective journalism. If you don't have a comparison, you won't recognize a bug. That's why only journalism reform (and bitcoin, tor and nostr) can save us. Media houses have to face competition. Twitter is moving in that direction, but from my perspective Twitter is the opposite of decentralization. Substack is awesome, but it has no reach. I think we need to look for other ways to get reach with quality journalism.
Thomas's avatar
Thomas 2 years ago
While not censorship in the literal definition, I think in a way solar power could be also considered a censorship resistant technology as a government or company can’t practically block someone from sunlight. Like communication & commerce, energy is essential and solar enables anyone access to electricity without relying on or being blocked by others
*i2p. Its better for a few use cases. I think the main reason that it hasn't really caught on is that people still want access to the greater web. I2P is ment to be used without outproxies to the rest of the web.
ShoddieKay's avatar
ShoddieKay 2 years ago
I doubt that most people even know about these technologies that don’t live tech-centric lives.
Pj's avatar
Pj 2 years ago
If you care about censorship resistance, you should check out #Monero
Emily's avatar
Emily 2 years ago
What about BlueSky? So it can be censored
pam's avatar
pam 2 years ago
I was talking to my brother about this recently - while solar is free, depends on who processes and controls it I’d reckon? - I think in the US utility is mostly under private sector but controlled by state or municipal council? I remember something abt solar tax but it was removed or never implemented in CA. In my country utility is ran by one company, privatised but wholly-owned by the gov’t - we don’t have sufficient surplus energy to be reliant data centres despite ongoing heatwave lol. I think in Germany utility is nationalised? - a number of European countries I believe fall under this category esp scandi hence the ongoing energy migration dilemma. I remember something along the line of France nationalising some energy companies too. Maybe US has one of the highest liberation when it concerns utility
tooright's avatar
tooright 2 years ago
The entire world’s population wants censorship resistant tech, they just don’t know it yet.
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nobody 2 years ago
it depends on how you are discussing censorship. all of those are subject to pervasive ai corruption by virtue of corrupt language models infiltrating, influencing, and forcing decisions on humans because of fear of outcome. the tech may be resistant in its protocol dev, but the application of interaction with human psychology influenced by agi will still enable censored outcomes. i agree on premise with the statement though.
"showing most of the world doesn’t actually care about censorship." 😔 That truth is kind of depressing.
I'm looking forward to the day when I can buy a wifi router with a NOSTR and Bitcoin node built into it. I take it out of the box, plug it in, run minimal setup and forget about it.
They are also censors. They can do it in their jurisdiction. Since they see this right in themselves, they find it right for others to do it. Most of the world? Yes of course. The world would be heaven if most of the world didn't have nightmares. It's not hell. Only those who wake up realize they are having nightmares.
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Edvard 2 years ago
Thank you for mentioning nostr. This is how I found Damus.
I find a lot of people don’t see censorship as that big of an issue. They don’t like it, but won’t adopt new apps because of it.
Ray's avatar
Ray 2 years ago
Hey jack, are you still walking and fasting ?
Crease's avatar
Crease 2 years ago
Do you have any recs on business opportunities in making any of them more accessible/easy to use?
What are you doing to help with Nostr. I know what you've done for Bitcoin and wish you'd look into helping set up nonprofit education centers to teach lower income how it opens their world tbh
Censorship resistance is a byproduct of this croud-sourced defense of civil liberties. These technologies, built on strong encryption, efficiently secure many natural rights that are regularly eroded by public apathy to government corruption and incompetance.
every single sentence you post suddenly is buried under a woke shitbot comment ! This is worse than censorship- this is programmed massive woke brainwash
non's avatar
non 2 years ago
What about bluesky?
Lmao sure bitcoin is censorship resistant as long as you aren't a person of interest or you jump through a thousand hoops. use xmr if you want censorship resistance.
I'd say email is even more censorship resistant than the others. pgp and self hosting give many options. Email providers are not much different to nostr relay providers. Also I've never heard of anyone having their emails censored (it may happen, but its not something I know about, unlike Twitter/Facebook/reddit/dicord etc
Adrian's avatar
Adrian 2 years ago
I'm using Damus on iOS...it's relatively easy to use. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
you faggot censored my words befire while i was still using tweeter
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metalgod 2 years ago
Signal App woud be another candidate
angel's avatar
angel 2 years ago
The general public faces a paradox regarding open blockchains: 'I want to participate in transactions anonymously, but I don't want to deal with anonymous entities if the system turns against me.' Most people seem willing to trade their freedom for the peace of mind of knowing someone is in control. Craving safety often means, to some extent, surrendering one's liberties. Humans sometimes prefer dictatorial systems, primarily because these systems provide a sense of security. That is why I don't think the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin—as an austro-libertarian cypherpunk* mind likes to fantasize—could happen today, with the system as is. *Privacy, freedom, minimal government intervention
Best way to grow a following and find people you like is it #findyourtribe and comment on posts that interest you.
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Persy 2 years ago
*Chuckles in fungibility issues* #monero
Bitcoin miners can see and censor specific "blacklisted" transactions and start causing trouble way before even reaching a 51% attack. Monero miners cannot since that info is hidden. So it is even more censorship resistant in that regard.