Hacker News Reader

Comment by thathndude | Hacker News Reader

This is going to increasingly be a problem. We don’t need a National digital currency for there to be control in our finances. As long as everything flows through 3-4 “private” entities, and those entities owe their existence to gov’t bailouts, they’ll be quasi-govt organizations.

View on HN

> We don’t need a National digital currency for there to be control in our finances.

> everything flows through 3-4 “private” entities

Brilliant separation of concerns isn't it. -- The government says we can have all the porn we want (1st amendment) -- The cc processors say "we won't let you pay for it" (google: bill ackman )

Now find me a pollution who wants to pass some sort of pro porn bill to make the CC processors allow for these payments.

European here, sorry if I misunderstood, but I always thought the "free speech" protected by the first amendment only protects your right to e.g. voice your political opinion without being punished for your particular views, not your preferences in porn (or the distribution and even existence of it)? As an extreme counterexample the government banned CSAM and one couldn't weasel their way out of such a case by pleading first amendment, right?

It wasn’t that long ago that porn was banned in the US, and ‘obscene’ material still technically is. It’s generally allowed under a 1st amendment exception.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_objections_to_pornogra...]

It is actually freedom of expression, which covers speech, art, religion, etc. Porn/sex work can be any and all of those.

From what I understand, it even covers campaign contributions.

That's a so complicated case, that it's an increasingly bad example.

CSAM is basically evidence of a crime, so it's treated as such, private entities are pressured to monitor for it, detect it, quarantine it, etc.

Which in some abstract sense is okay. (We have data on rising child abuse, including sexual, also data on rising CSAM on the internet and so on, so some very effective interest groups are trying to "do something".) Now, of course, it might not come as a complete surprise to you here on HN that the pragmatic concerns about the approach, proposals, implementation, lawcraft and whatnot involved are far outweigh even the wildest claims of benefits, the whole enterprise is very counter-productive, at best security-theater, but in reality it's just a fucking public interest disaster (FOSTA/SESTA, basically War on Sex Work, yet another highly acclaimed installment of the War On series!), an in a convenient secondary effect it's a "free moat" for the incumbents.

The obvious legal issue is that it's "impossible" to say what it CSAM and what is something that looks like that. For example, what if, there's a machine that generates pictures that look like CSAM? You might advertise it, but likely in no time the DoJ and a bunch of other federal and state entities would sue (and of course arrest, raid, detain) you arguing that somewhere there's actual CSAM in the process, it's distribution, etc.

And even if simple plain "aliens in a vacuum" reading of the law indicates that eventually the government would lose these cases, it's very realistic that the courts themselves would just make new law that in effect criminalizes this even more victimless version too.

But, all in all, with enough advocacy it's possible, just there are very few people who want to spend their life on this.

If AI generated CSAM is poisoned by actual CSAM in the process, wouldn't that extend to AI generated art being poisoned by copyrighted work in the process?

Logically, but not necessarily legally.

It's poisoned by the fact that it requires access to CSAM, which makes the operation illegal, even if the output might not be illegal.

CSAM is not in violation of the first amendment because the supreme court decided that obscenity isn't protected speech. It isn't specifically that the first amendment only protects political speech, like with abortion, obscenity limitations - particularly related to children - are just something the court made up which no one really openly disagrees with (for obvious reasons).

In a way it shows that the first amendment isn't really all that absolute. Say something that enough powerful people find gross and they'll just make it out to be an unstated exception.

It's worse than that; actual government regulation has oversight, constitutional protections, appeals processes and the like. But by doing it indirectly through the payment system they can sidestep all of that.

My friend, you’re talking to a lawyer who makes his living suing banks for violating consumer rights. Suffice it to say, all of these concerns are very very well Justified.

It will happen: with national digital currencies the control will happen and as soon there is some real threat, people WILL be cut from the possibilities to make payments!

Anonymous payments are required for things to work, and will be taxed.

> and as soon there is some real threat

No, the threat won't need to be anywhere close to real. It will be abused politically against whoever is disagreeing with the government, like it was against the truckers demoing in Canada.

The banking system is actually already weaponized case when stakes are high. In my own nominally democratic country, access to loans for the presidential campaign is already refused by national banks to the party that ranked second the last two times. The leader then had to ask for Russian funding...

Those "protesters" started having their banking denied once they started advocating for overthrowing the government. They were not just protesting, they were planning and requesting the government to be overthrown and guns were found. So at this point, it is possible that yes, the government will take exceptionally high measures to counter an attack against the state.

Tons of people have been protesting about the Canadian government and COVID measures outside of that blockade (up to this day), and their bank account is still fine.

I think that national digital currencies have less risk than the current private providers. While in both cases some people will be (I mean, already are) cut from the possibility to make payments, these aren't the same people and the impact is different.

Government-run payment systems have to have explicit legal grounds to make decisions, and their ability to make discriminatory decisions is curtailed by constitutional requirements for fair and equal treatments. A government-run payment system can and will block payments which are for a purpose which the general society through their elected representatives has decided to be criminal, and if the society changes their mind (as it has on many things) they can legalize that stuff, and it will also become legal in the payment system.

On the other hand, the current privately-run system can (and already does!) block payments which are for a purpose which a few unelected rich dudes have unilaterally decided do be undesirable; and if the society decides to legalize that stuff, they can ignore it as that's their arbitrary private choice and they can't be held accountable.

> the current privately-run system can (and already does!) block payments which are for a purpose which a few unelected rich dudes have unilaterally decided do be undesirable; and if the society decides to legalize that stuff, they can ignore it as that's their arbitrary private choice and they can't be held accountable

People are obsessed eith the idea that censorship can only come from government, they are completely blind to the idea of that rich individuals have agendas and power to advance them.

What's more is that if government run and managed money comes around with this supreme court, you can rest easy knowing you can pay for pretty much anything other than an abortion with it.

Only issue is that "I want to oppose the Federal Regulators' stated goal of increasing the safety and soundness of your bank"[1] doesn't go over well even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. It's the new "high-risk".

[1]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/07/2023-02...

> As long as everything flows through 3-4 “private” entities, and those entities owe their existence to gov’t bailouts, they’ll be quasi-govt organizations.

You are so fixated on Government, you miss the forest for the trees.

If these 3 organisations are run by similar people with similar agendas, you can have universal censorship.

No need for government. Tyrany has been privatized

private companies are tyrannical by default

Traditionally, legally, when a private businesses monopolizes and aspect of life, they take on some obligations of government, like "town squares" inside shopping malls.

Go find a shopping mall that can't kick you out at will. I'll wait.

Worse than government organizations. Government organizations have to follow all sorts of pesky rules about what they can do e.g. the first amendment. Corps can do whatever, so the government loves to use them as puppets to do what they want when the rules don't allow them to it themselves e.g. banning porn and banning people talking about the COVID lab leak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com