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Comment by moritonal | Hacker News Reader

Because the only reason I can imagine someone wanting a open database without gate keepers is for something the society I've aligned with has decided is illegal.

At the end of the day, I guess I trust the goverment I vote for and the banks I decide on more than a distributed group of strangers. Do you have an example of a DB that was unfairly limited by a gate keeper?

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> At the end of the day, I guess I trust the goverment I vote for and the banks I decide on more than a distributed group of strangers.

This is a pretty ignorant take on how blockchains work. Feel free to have your opinions, but if you really think that billions of dollars is secured in Bitcoin simply because "a distributed group of strangers" are trustworthy, you've missed the entire point and you don't actually understand how it works. "Trustless" is a 'buzz word' you might want to put a lot more respect on - and maybe first learn what it actually means.

Come on, I read the original bitcoin paper upon its release xD I shortened my original post, but had explained that in the UK the Land-registry has started using a blockchain for record keeping. It worked well and is a good solution, but only whilst they stay as the sole writer. A distributed registry of home-ownership would have many risks, the largest being a sybil attack. Which Bitcoin is also liable to, where your coins are essentially protected in the trust of strangers all acting in their own interest. I can't really respect "trustless" given its an oxymoron really meaning "trust a mass of unknown people to act in their own interest".

Putting that aside, let's deal with the original quoted issue. I am privileged enough to be in a place where I trust my government, and by extension agree with their rules. The "trustless" setup of Bitcoin has meant that CP can be hosted comfortably within it (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47130268). A system with a liable entity would be able to solve this, Bitcoin cannot. I don't feel ignorant to think this is an issue?

You can have plenty of knowledge about Bitcoin, but your original comment about 'trust' reflects none of it. As you know, you don't 'trust' the group of strangers who run Bitcoin software to ensure the security of the protocol - that is in fact that opposite of the intention and for the most part the result. So yes, you failed to demonstrate any knowledge of how blockchains work and now you are introducing a red herring to the original argument.

By the way, Bitcoin does not have that problem because the story you linked is about a wild fork of Bitcoin which is unsustainable anyways - not even counting the fact that BSV is not intended as a file hosting service. Perhaps see what IPFS or other file hosting coins and protocols do to stop that problem. And as hard as it is to swallow, there are plenty of other ways to obscure the uploading of illegal data across all sorts of centralized services - but we don't just get rid of the internet.

So far you've just said I'm wrong. Let me try clarify. The value of your coins relies supposedly on your ability to exchange them, which in turn relies on the miners following the protocol in self-interest which happens to line up with your interest. That sounds like you're trusting the miners to continue mining the fork you prefer?

The miners are interested in making money. Why would they mine a fork which the large majority of users and traders value at $0?

Facebook, Twitter or any walled garden. I can't build any app I want on top of those without risking it being limited, restricted or shut down... If they even provide an API at all.

So don't build on FB and Twitter? You do realize you can build an application and very easily host it for the world to access on AWS/GCP/Azure - unless you're doing something illegal or highly unethical the cloud services aren't going to kick you off. It sounds like you're saying you want to build a social media app but you don't like the fact that social media is dominated by a handful of companies (because the majority of users want to use their product already).

> Get censored off Twitter without breaking the law.

"Just build your own Twitter!"

> Conservative Twitter gets kicked off hosting services.

"Just build your own hosting services!"

> People talk about the importance of Web3 for openness and censorship resistance.

"Web3 is a grift, and if its not its for illegal things then you're only getting marginal value as compared to using FB or Twitter! So just build your own Twitter!"

I'm getting dizzy.

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