Comment by cmatthieu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmatthieu | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to NoFILTER, the unstoppable, uncensorable, undeplatformable freedom of speech app. By design, this app allows you to spread your word without limits. This app and your articles reside on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized mesh network consisting of thousands of user nodes. There is no web server, no database, and no cloud; therefore, making this app and your content unstoppable and undeplatformable.

When your article gets published to IPFS, the hash of the contents of the article becomes the name of the file. If one character gets added or removed the hash name changes; therefore, making it impossible to censor.

If a government were to try to block the nofilter.org domain, you can still access the site and the content via hundreds of IPFS gateways around the world as well as through #IPFS directly by downloading the ipfs companion browser extension or by using the Brave browser which natively supports the IPFS protocol.

Here's the same article but hosted on NoFILTER (IPFS) - https://nofilter.org/#/0xae48565bfb998f7cc7855e910345f5b801a...

What happens if someone uploads child pornography? Does it just stay there and everyone has to deal with looking at it?

Their ToS say they will take it down if they feel like taking it down.

So it's not free speech?

It’s more free than some places online but definitely less free than standing on a box in the park and making a speech.

>What happens if someone uploads child pornography?

That's illegal.

Out of curiosity, if this app really allows unstoppable and uncensorable posting, how does it deal with DoS attacks?

There's also the question of reachability on IPFS. Something _existing_ on IPFS is not the same as : everyone can access it .

That's the beauty of it, it doesn't. You can spam nonsense all day long. This is only a problem if you want people to actually read what you are posting.

I would challenge the downvoters of this comment to contribute an informed rebuttal.

IPFS is just content-addressing+p2p. In the conventional sense it is similar in comparison to the greater internet. Joe Blow can be on his blog talking about blenders and mixing spoons all day and none of us have to know he exists until we follow the address to his content, thereby downloading it.

Where IPFS takes this a step further is enrolling the viewer/reader/participant in the swarm of peers replicating this content.

The point is that hosting content uses resources, and resources are limited. Therefore, if nothing prevents it, an attacker could theoretically use up all the resources available, which would bring this supposedly unstoppable publishing platform to a stop. Yet, if they prevented it, it would be a kind of censorship, so the platform could not claim to be uncensorable.

Despite all the talk IPFS is just voluntary content mirroring. If people feel you're spamming, they'll stop mirroring your shit. Which of course illustrates the worthlessness of the platform for "Anti-censorship" and "Free Speech."

I stopped believing in "decentralized free speech" platforms the moment they all decided to censor and attack anyone they politically disagreed with (ie Gab's treatment at the hands of Mastodon). None of the people running these projects actually understand what freedom of speech really is (the ability of THE PEOPLE YOU HATE to speak, a principle, not just a law). When these people drone on and one about "Free Speech" and "Anti-censorship," they really just mean "for people who agree with me," which is no free speech at all.

Beyond that, IPFS is a joke. It's hovered in toy status for years, devoid of the core features it needs to justify its existence (a way to motivate people to host besides the goodness of their hearts, a DNS replacement that's not laughable, a simple and stable interface etc). But even if IPFS was everything it claims to be, using it for something like this is laughable:

1. There is no security in IPFS. It's a content mirroring technology. If you're hosting something illegal, the authorities can find you just fine.

2. IPFS is entirely voluntary. Mirrors can opt out of mirroring things they don't want to host. What are people going to opt out of most? Controversial content. Oh yeah, you can host "controversial" content of the type a teenager things is controversial. But anything actually hot is going to get shit-canned before you can blink.

Overall, IPFS, and anything built on it, is either absurd over-engineering or absurd under-engineering. If you wanna mirror bland, non-hot stuff, just mirror it in the usual ways. You don't need all this cyber-punk larping cloak-and-dagger shit. Nobody cares. And if they DO care? IPFS ain't gonna save you.

"Free speech" of the type often invoked these days is essentially, "the right to be hateful, attack other groups and lobby for their subjugation". Then, of course, there's the "right to poison society by spreading radicalizing disinformation".

Adherents to this style of free speech decry their de-platforming by "big tech" which doesn't want to endorse their toxicity (partly because dysfunctional societies are bad for business and partly because their targeted customers may speak with their wallets).

The acolytes' standard reaction in response to this violation of their right to be awful is "who gets to choose which speech is acceptable?" as if we don't otherwise have a functioning society, social contract, and laws.

Other people get to choose. That's who. Their right to free speech includes a non-obligation to regurgitate your speech. Don't want to be "censored"? Then, don't pretend you have no idea what anti-social behavior is and don't be awful to other people.

Otherwise expect that you're free to talk, but no one's obligated to listen.

For those who don't agree with this, then tell you what: pick something absolutely and near universally abhorrent, say sexual abuse of children, and make the right to lobby for its legitimacy your rallying cry. Use it as the example of speech you intend to allow because "who should be the arbiter?"

Until you're willing to stake your beliefs (or project, etc.) on that, no one should buy what you're selling. Because then it becomes immediately obvious that what you're really lobbying for is a narrow, but vocal group of people whose ideas you likely agree with, but whose speech you view as recently restricted.

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