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Comment by wikitopian | Hacker News Reader

In the case of the Daily Stormer, it was free speech and you very clearly and directly made the incorrect call.

I'm a big fan of your thoughtful speeches while you grapple with these sticky situations. But why not just invest some pocket change in helping solve TOR's name resolution problem so that removal from the clearnet isn't the death sentence it currently is?

There's a simple and obvious solution to this which doesn't interfere with your principles or your business model: a crypto-driven system for assigning human readable addresses to onion addresses. With that in place and included in the tor browser and in a simple browser plugin for other browsers, you can focus on fighting DDOS attacks on clearnet sites instead of being the reluctant referee of the world's communication.

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You are free to make a decentralized crypto-driven platform filled with nazi's. What you're ignoring is there are very valid reasons these platforms don't exist. They become deplorable crapsack worlds that 'normies' will not visit. It is never going to have any mainstream popularity. "Oh, you're on that nazi child porn software". And it requires a massive amount of moderation to ensure such a form does not become a complete hellhole (see failures of NNTP).

When you pull your crypto driven system out of the light, you are going to have to fight what lives in the dark. If you screwed up the protocol of your system and it's taken over, well it's gone, you exist outside the law and there are no means to get it back. Do a bunch of trolls with stolen crypto generation means exist on your network and flood out all the legitimate users, well too bad.

Civil society exists between the authoritarians that want dominion over everything and those that embrace chaos and would leave the world in ruin. It is a delicate and imperfect balance, but where it exists allows humanity to flourish.

The tor dark web already exists and everybody knows what goes on there. There are already decentralized crypto-driven naming services.

Merely improving the tor network's name resolution has nothing to do with your grand philosophical argument against internet freedom.

I believe we're arguing past each other. What I'm saying is there is no business model (one is even needed for free projects like the linux kernel) that motivates people to spend this effort. The people with the technical know how and desire to obtain the materials on it already use it. Beyond that group there is little motivation to expand such network, civil society tends to operate in the open.

I'm talking about an elegant technical solution to cloudflare's very real business problem. If they deliver a solid open source solution to the dark web name resolution problem, there's less pressure on them to host all sorts of marginal content.

A rare win/win.

"civil society tends to operate in the open"

... Some of us aren't up to your standards of civility and propriety, and we're going to find ways to get on without your permission.

Then write the code already, just don't demand that someone else do it for you.

It's entirely okay to bully people who've made billions atop open and open source software into contributing back to the community.

Especially when you can make the case that doing so will help their bottom line and legal footing.

I think OP’s point was that nobody would want to help a cesspool of racists and pedophiles operate more effectively.

Claiming that pedophiles also wish to communicate privately as an argument against private communication is beneath my comprehension. To even think that way gives me a sort of ice cream headache of the soul. Knowing that a large and growing share of people actually think that ways triggers and harms me.

The government should have the ability to violate privacy subject to judicial review. Otherwise, no law could be reasonably enforced.

Successive governments have undermined the authority of judicial review and I'd support anyone campaigning to change that. But, the solution isn't to try and build a system that prevents the government from ever piercing the privacy of citizens. That's just a recipe for anarchy.

Honestly, maybe a few years ago I might have been on your side. But, this whole cryptocurrency saga has just soured me on techno-libertarianism. A society needs an effective government (accountable to the people) that can enforce the law.

The public key cryptographic algorithm is in the public domain so the question is really just how humanity will grapple with the fact that humans can communicate privately.

I agree it presents a lot of problems, crypto has harmed millions of people, and the people who presented crypto as investments should be held accountable by standard government rules.

Yet, people freak out when things like Tornado Cash get sanctioned. If there is total inviolable privacy, then criminals will act with impunity.

But yes, these are indeed complicated problems. All I really know is that I sleep much better at night knowing I've never aided this movement in any way.

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