Bitcoin Forum

I am a consistent VPN user. One of my pet peeves is that a majority of websites flag VPN users as spammers, which is unfair, but completely understandable as most spammers will of course, use VPNs when their main IP has been flagged/banned.

So, on sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, etc, it is difficult to sift through and filter the spammers from the non spammers, especially if both parties are using VPNs, even if it is for different reasons (For me, it is for privacy reasons. For spammers, it is, well, to spam)

I believe crypto has offered a great solution to this. For example, on Bitcointalk, TOR users aren't outright banned, as they would be on any other forum of this size. Instead, you use crypto to verify your pseudoanonymous identity, after which you'll be allowed access, and will be allowed to post.

As we progress further, I think the ability to sign messages to verify identity will allow for sites like Wikipedia to open up editing to VPN users as well (Yes, there are many issues with this right now, but we could resolve them with time, I think)

But what makes you think that people who want to do spams will register themselves , would they use the loopholes or some other software which is allowing them to do whatever they want without doing the KYC?
Unfortunately the government is the only body that can enforce such things like , mandatory KYC for even sending messages and as you can see it sounds very ridiculous for the people who engage in the marketing and all.
It is a good idea but it lacks the implementation strategy.

The websites are banning your IP addresses from the VPN's right? I'm pretty sure the VPNs have very similar/recognizable IP's and it allows any company who wants to, be easily able to those logins.

I wouldn't say it's that difficult to ban out spammers - it would be pretty easy to ban out a lot of the facebook spammers, a lot of them share the same IP because they share the same household, or use the same VPN's.

I agree. Signing messages per addresses are already a thing but there could be further alterations to prove one's online ID (not their actual KYC information though).

this as a solution to VPN's... um, it wont work

firstly the OP doesnt realise that he is not the only user of a particular IP address. othr more nefarious people use vpn's to DDoS websites. so before even getting to a log-in page. a website will review an IP and if it appears as a VPN/proxy that usually is linked to DDoSing, then the website wil block the IP even before the user gets to see a log-in page.

so with that said, how is a user to log-in/sign a message if they are IP banned

This is a very good point. Hopefully we can come up with better solutions in the future. There will never be a way to mitigate DDoS attacks, however, I fear.

This don't quite solve spam issue since as a spammer you can create as many identities as you want and sign each message from different wallet. Much more work but possible.

Idena is struggling to solve this issue.

Every network participant solve touring test (hard for AI easy for human) at the same time (called validation) that way you create your identity that can be used all around the internet. Already implemented on their forum:

https://discuss.idena.website/
And on gitcoin (or in the process of adding - not sure):
https://gitcoin.co/issue/idena-network/idena-desktop/454/100023832

You can also mine IDENA using your identity created during validation. No KYC.