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Comment by bra-ket | Hacker News Reader

I think the best plan of action is creating a new decentralized free speech platform, as resilient as a cockroach, blockchain or scihub.

I’ve sent a message to sama & pg asking to add this to the YC list of ‘requests for startups’. I hope they hear.

For those lurking, this is a tremendous opportunity and real need as you have half the country desperate to let their voice be heard while being aggressively silenced and de-platformed for political reasons.

You can have a monopoly on free speech.. just kidding , purely decentralized. Hit me up with your hot ideas and Go chops.

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I disagree with this. This might be a solution, but it is not "the" solution.

I really, truly believe that any startup idea has to pass the child pornography test. Most B2C companies have to deal with this at some point if they allow user to user interaction.

A decentralized platform as advocated for could not survive if it's not capable of censuring things. You have to censure for child pornography--it's illegal to host it. Court actions around torrents have held that the sites hosting them are not decentralized--The Pirate Bay is at fault for hosting illegally obtained content. Same thing with this--as long as hosting child pornography is illegal (and it should be, not debating that) you won't have a mainstream "decentralized" social media site[0].

This follows for all the other stuff that's going on. Inciting violence is illegal. That, plain and simple, is why Trump was removed from Twitter. Twitter even waited until his violence actually killed people. Even Parler recognizes this[1] and has started censuring, because it could be sued into the ground for inciting violence. If you think that there's a technological solution for this problem--you're missing the bigger picture. Big social media tech _loves_ this stuff--people talk about it all day--they even donate to the groups that help organize it[2].

We're not missing a technological solution--we're missing a legislative one.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/02/parler-...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/09/parler-reportedly-removed-...

[2] https://documented.net/2021/01/republican-attorneys-general-...

You make some good points. I want to reply to a couple of them.

I like the idea of a decentralized platform, but I agree that the solution has to be a legislative one. What's being lost is the "national conversation" on the subject and now private companies are deciding for everyone. Billions of people are now being told they don't get to decide how they interact with society; instead, literally a few people are deciding on behalf of billions. There is very little way to spin that as a positive result. This is what democracy is literally for - "we all decide together what we want the rules to be". I'm... honestly so saddened to see that people can't see that.

If "the people" decide, and what's happening now is what everyone votes for? Great! I may not like it but at least we know that we used good means since the means determine the ends. Right now, the means we are using is literally corporations acting as governments - making decisions for billions.

Re: idea has to pass the child porn test: agree. There's a few others too like illegal incitement etc. A platform needs a meaningful way to detect and remove this (not only because the law requires it, but this is a protective measure to ensure everyone gets to interact on that platform instead of it just disappearing).

This comment does not deserve to be downvoted. A decentralized platform ensuring people can communicate with who they want is a net positive for society.

If this is something you're interested in, I am as well.

> A decentralized platform ensuring people can communicate with who they want

Once upon a time, we called that "The Internet." Good times. Good times.

That’s called Mastodon, email, finger, Usenet…

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