100%. Telling you who you can transact with would be problematic censorship. Telling you that you can't send dickbutts is just defining the protocol. Just like telling you you can't send 8 mb transactions.
Now, HOW you do that without breaking legitimate functionality is where things get tricky. Everyone seems to want to rush in without doing the hard part: figuring this out. Policy filters were always a band aid because this is hard to do at the consensus level. And I'd be fine with lifting them: IFF we solve the matter at consensus.
You want more standardized mempools? Figure out the consensus changes. Otherwise I'll just not take part in pushing garbage onto the chain. Not because I think it'll stop it from getting there, but because I have no incentive to help it do so, and it's my node.
As for the 444 crowd, the FUD isn't helping. Come back when you've got a realistic solution, but just throwing out untested consensus changes into production is reckless. And let's not even talk about the rhetoric pushing it as "urgent."
The consensus rules have always been about morality
One charge that's frequently levied at knotzis is that any attempt to reject spam at the consensus level is based on "moral" objections to spam transactions instead of "technical" objections. One problem with this argument is that *many* consensus rules are based on moral objections to potential transactions:
- no doublespending? It's there to prevent "fraud"
- the 21 million cap? It's there to block "inflation"
- proof of work? It's there to ensure "honesty"
Those are the words Satoshi used to motivate the "rules and incentives...enforced [via bitcoin's] consensus mechanism" (the bitcoin whitepaper), and I think they resonate with many of us.
So yeah, "spam is illegitimate" is a moral claim. And if we enforce it, it will be one of several moral claims enforced at the consensus level. Because that's what bitcoin is for: to create a monetary system that is fundamentally *more moral* (in certain ways) than the alternatives. Spam limits, if they become consensus, are just more moral bricks in the wall.
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