Andreas Antonopoulos about censorship on bitcointalk and reddit

[Mr Felt]

[img]-snip-[img]

If such scenario ever happens, good luck trying to convince the overwhelming majority that their version is not bitcoin.

Again, thats not how it works. You don't have to convince anyone of anything. Bitcoin is a protocol that is based on consensus, not who can pander to the most people. Frankly, this is really a no win situation. Both XT and Core have problems, rather than solving those problems, they are just fighting a publicity battle, which is causing a bigger issue. If Bitcoin works the way that people are trying to make it work, the way you suggest, it is the greatest security risk Bitcoin has ever had, and "Bitcoin" can be safely called dead unless its fixed. Block size issues need to be fixed, a solution that doesn't require 15Mb upload/download speeds to broadcast larger sized blocks needs to exist, anonymity things need to be added, amongst other things. But those can all wait, as soon as all it requires is a majority to modify Bitcoin, anyone who can buy support for whatever cause they want can, be that block size increases, block reward increase/decreases, etc.

Again, the protocol requires consensus. This isn't a majority rule system, because majority rule systems are not stable nor secure. While Theymos has expressed that he isn't a fan of XT's proposed changes, I believe his greater concern is the same I addressed a moment ago. The straight definition however of an Alt Coin, is a Blockchain/Coin that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin requires 99.9% concensus. Without that concensus its not Bitcoin, and therefor an alt coin.

*99.9% is just an aproximation, whatever the actual value is is aproximate 100% - statistical misrepresentations/margin of error etc, but its near 100%.

The thing is, achieving a near complete consensus among large groups of people with diametrical views is outright impossible (as shown) although it would be ideal. The only thing we can expect in the future is hard-forking by the of majority of economic participants and let the minorities decide if they follow or not. XT is the first but not the last of these kind of alternate client implementations. Don't fool yourself.

Waiting for a 99.9% consensus belongs to fantasy land at this point and will never happen.

Both points are correct in a way.  I'd feel much better about the process if all ideas were welcomed and taken seriously (assuming they're put out there with a level of seriousness and effort).  Unfortunately, the status quo is over-politicized were people resort to manipulation of discourse (trolling, sock-puppetry, marketing, deleting, banning, etc.) to prevent full debate and full consideration of alternatives.  Also, the development process feels closed and overly ideological. I get the sense that there are some core contributors that are not willing to seriously consider all serious proposals.  That seems like a breach of something, but I'm not sure what exactly (in law, contracts come with an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing - I feel like good faith negotiations are impossible to some extent; but I hope I'm wrong) - maybe this is a problem endemic of digital and distributed decision-making that a Ledger article could tackle. 

In short, consensus is ideal, but it only works when the decision makers are genuinely open to change.  When fingers are put in ears b/c of ideology, then true consensus is not possible in a growing ecosystem with diversity of ideas.  Instead, Bitcoin seems like its being held hostage.  Such an environment makes hard forks inevitable and necessary for those with different ideas.  I don't see how Gavin and Mike had any other choice with how they released XT given how hostile folks have been towards them and their proposal. I don't believe one person said - good effort, why don't you try tweaking X.  Or, here's what a blocksize increase BIP has to cover, this didn't cover it, make some edits and we'll look again.  From my perspective, the process lacks any real clarity, transparency, respect/professionalism, intellectual rigor, or regard for users.  This is what the XT brouhaha has been about, not blacklisting or blocksize or other nerd things that should be debated. 

[SaltySpitoon]

The thing is, achieving a near complete consensus among large groups of people with diametrical views is outright impossible (as shown) although it would be ideal. The only thing we can expect in the future is hard-forking by the of majority of economic participants and let the minorities decide if they follow or not. XT is the first but not the last of these kind of alternate client implementations. Don't fool yourself.

Waiting for a 99.9% consensus belongs to fantasy land at this point and will never happen.

Bitcoin has been forked, what 4 or 5 times now?  Concensus is the way it is for a reason, its Bitcoin's most valuable security feature. It is by incredibly valuable design that you can't do what is being proposed here. If you think about security as far as hashing power and math goes, you have Bitcoin what it is right now. Win or lose, add BitcoinXT to the debate, and you now add other factors. Nodes, who you can bribe, etc. We are moving away from having to exploit a steadfast set of code, to being able to exploit people if you can't exploit the code. Bitcoin is supposed to be hard to change. If you support bigger blocks, or if you support smaller blocks, whatever, it doesn't matter. Don't support the idiots involved, support the Bitcoin code, and you will see how ridiculous everyone is acting, on both sides I might add. I'm not really a core support, nor an XT supporter. I think that XT has some broken features, and I think core needs to change a bit, but what I appose more than anything is how everyone is going about things, and the damage they are causing.

[knight22]

[img]-snip-[img]

If such scenario ever happens, good luck trying to convince the overwhelming majority that their version is not bitcoin.

Again, thats not how it works. You don't have to convince anyone of anything. Bitcoin is a protocol that is based on consensus, not who can pander to the most people. Frankly, this is really a no win situation. Both XT and Core have problems, rather than solving those problems, they are just fighting a publicity battle, which is causing a bigger issue. If Bitcoin works the way that people are trying to make it work, the way you suggest, it is the greatest security risk Bitcoin has ever had, and "Bitcoin" can be safely called dead unless its fixed. Block size issues need to be fixed, a solution that doesn't require 15Mb upload/download speeds to broadcast larger sized blocks needs to exist, anonymity things need to be added, amongst other things. But those can all wait, as soon as all it requires is a majority to modify Bitcoin, anyone who can buy support for whatever cause they want can, be that block size increases, block reward increase/decreases, etc.

Again, the protocol requires consensus. This isn't a majority rule system, because majority rule systems are not stable nor secure. While Theymos has expressed that he isn't a fan of XT's proposed changes, I believe his greater concern is the same I addressed a moment ago. The straight definition however of an Alt Coin, is a Blockchain/Coin that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin requires 99.9% concensus. Without that concensus its not Bitcoin, and therefor an alt coin.

*99.9% is just an aproximation, whatever the actual value is is aproximate 100% - statistical misrepresentations/margin of error etc, but its near 100%.

The thing is, achieving a near complete consensus among large groups of people with diametrical views is outright impossible (as shown) although it would be ideal. The only thing we can expect in the future is hard-forking by the of majority of economic participants and let the minorities decide if they follow or not. XT is the first but not the last of these kind of alternate client implementations. Don't fool yourself.

Waiting for a 99.9% consensus belongs to fantasy land at this point and will never happen.

So bitcoin should become a democracy? Sounds like endless hard forks ahead and many, many surviving blockchains. Probably not just a civil war between two chains, but many.

I don’t know what bitcoin should become but we need to realize this: waiting for a consensus to make a change doesn't mean there is a consensus for the status quo. The participants that want changes doesn't require a consensus to fork the code so at some point, if the status quo can’t come up with a consensus for everybody, then a fork is to be expected by those who want changes no matter what proportion of the market they represent (more likely to happen if they are an overwhelming economic majority). Hopefully that kind of pressure will be enough to force a ultimate consensus by the status quo to avoid this potential situation.

[Sourgummies]

I wish the /r/bitcoin moderators would utilize reddit's upvote/downvote system more often.

This would allow the bitcoin community more input into what is relevant and what is irrelevant. If posts are deleted, then this voting power is nullified.

Or those with all the time in the day could push their agendas,so that they can profit off the back of the naive holders.
Would much prefer some one with a interest watching over the forums or any outside force could push its way in and develop a fracture.
No one is perfect when it comes to moderating and there will always be people that feel bum hurt for some reason or another. Theymos right or wrong is far better than
say some one that wants to see bitcoin die so they can profit off a altcoin pyramid scheme.

[LiteCoinGuy]

[img]-snip-[img]

If such scenario ever happens, good luck trying to convince the overwhelming majority that their version is not bitcoin.

Again, thats not how it works. You don't have to convince anyone of anything. Bitcoin is a protocol that is based on consensus, not who can pander to the most people. Frankly, this is really a no win situation. Both XT and Core have problems, rather than solving those problems, they are just fighting a publicity battle, which is causing a bigger issue. If Bitcoin works the way that people are trying to make it work, the way you suggest, it is the greatest security risk Bitcoin has ever had, and "Bitcoin" can be safely called dead unless its fixed. Block size issues need to be fixed, a solution that doesn't require 15Mb upload/download speeds to broadcast larger sized blocks needs to exist, anonymity things need to be added, amongst other things. But those can all wait, as soon as all it requires is a majority to modify Bitcoin, anyone who can buy support for whatever cause they want can, be that block size increases, block reward increase/decreases, etc.

Again, the protocol requires consensus. This isn't a majority rule system, because majority rule systems are not stable nor secure. While Theymos has expressed that he isn't a fan of XT's proposed changes, I believe his greater concern is the same I addressed a moment ago. The straight definition however of an Alt Coin, is a Blockchain/Coin that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin requires 99.9% concensus. Without that concensus its not Bitcoin, and therefor an alt coin.

*99.9% is just an aproximation, whatever the actual value is is aproximate 100% - statistical misrepresentations/margin of error etc, but its near 100%.

The thing is, achieving a near complete consensus among large groups of people with diametrical views is outright impossible (as shown) although it would be ideal. The only thing we can expect in the future is hard-forking by the of majority of economic participants and let the minorities decide if they follow or not. XT is the first but not the last of these kind of alternate client implementations. Don't fool yourself.

Waiting for a 99.9% consensus belongs to fantasy land at this point and will never happen.

i could not agree more on that one.

[Mickeyb]

Why should a dictator let others decide how to run his country?
*AFAIK, theymos has never stated that he is the owner of bitcointalk; he claims to be merely running it.

What makes you think that running a forum is comparable to running a country? It is not. It takes you minutes to set up a forum. Come back to me when you set up a country in 5 minutes.

For me, XT is just a try to create another altcoin by Gavin and Mike, nothing else. I am for the bigger blocks tbough, but certainly not for the XT takeover. All the moderation is explained in the rules of the forum so I don't see anything problematic here.

Just my 2 cents though..

Regardless of what XT is, there's a forum for it. XT supporters are refusing to leave and are just stirring trouble. This seems quite irrational to me.

XT supporters are most of them only supporters of bigger blocks either if it is done on Core so don't expect them to leave. Also expect greater pressure as time goes on.

I am not so sure about it. I mean there are many people that are supporting bigger blocks on this forum but are explicitly against the XT. I am one of them and have seen many more names as the discussion was going on in many threads.

About the pressure, yes. Pressure is here to stay. After all, nothing can be done about it except for moving of their threads as it's been done. This is free forum and anybody can post anything they want and moderators will decide is this OK or not.

[UsernameBitcoin]

Banning users and deleting discussions (Reddit) or even moving them (BCT) solely to reach some political goal is not 'so called "censorship"' it is the very definition of it.

Moving threads is not the definition of censorship. I will not talk about reddit. Bitcointalk.org is a privately owned forum, i.e. theymos is letting you talk about A LOT of things in his backyard. I'd say for sure that 99% of your guys have minimum experience with forums. Quite a lot of admins would instantly ban you for even accusing them of censorship or similar stuff. Theymos is really tolerant.

Moderation has been lighter here than on Reddit, that's true. (I've only had two of my posts deleted and nothing particularly important) But it's hard to know full extent of it. As much as I disagree with Theymos' position I don't think he's lying and it's time for me to move on to somewhere where the moderators wont actively try to sabotage the discussion.

Then go ahead. If someone does not like the rules (which are pretty good in my opinion), they can either: A) Respect them; B) Leave. A lot of people have complained on various things and said that they would leave, yet almost nobody ever did (i.e. leave for another forum).
Update:
Nice ninja delete. I've deleted my previous post because of it.

You can always argue and say "it's private, why don't you make your own one" but to be honest, that's a lame excuse. You also cannot just leave Facebook and use another social network if you don't like Zuckerberg's latest policy changes.
I would agree if this forum were still small or one of many. But with more power and influence comes also more responsibility. That's why there are laws to avoid monopolies, for example.
In the end, it's a question of integrity of the people who run a forum. I think bitcointalk is mostly okay, but on reddit, you can see a huge abuse of  power.

[Sourgummies]

Would be open to talk about bigger blocks,but think forcing the issue was a bit underhanded and that is why I get my backup when people mention XT.
The forum was bumrushed here with XT threads over and over and I imagine that Reddit would have been just as bad if allowed.
Open dialogue but no forcing the issue on people,that will turn most people off even if its for the better good.

That said I was disappointed to see some people I have appreciated learning from pushing that agenda full steam ahead. As a newer account I think it could have been easier to trick me into backing something that really was not for me. So now I have to think twice when reading some of these informative posts and think maybe something else in play.
Its to bad.

[SaltySpitoon]

I don’t know what bitcoin should become but we need to realize this: waiting for a consensus to make a change doesn't mean there is a consensus for the status quo. The participants that want changes doesn't require a consensus to fork the code so at some point, if the status quo can’t come up with a consensus for everybody, then a fork is to be expected by those who want changes no matter what proportion of the market they represent (more likely to happen if they are an overwhelming economic majority). Hopefully that kind of pressure will be enough to force a ultimate consensus by the status quo to avoid this potential situation.

Again, concensus is not a nice feature or a fairy tale or anything like that. It is 100% required. There is literally no other way, the entire debate is a moot point. Bitcoin XT is trying to help, but it is breaking the entire system, though they are surely not the only ones to blame. There is no pressuring participants, and there is no changing the codebase unless it is nearly 100% accepted. Its a very important and specific design that removes humans from the equation. Bitcoin is no better than fiat if just a simple majority is required. If you can take uninformed or uninterested people and push changes with nothing but that, there is no point in mining, there is no trust in science and math, and we are back to relying on humans to regulate currency.

Metaphorically, this isn't like changing the block reward, block size, etc. Its like changing the system so that anyone can make changes by paying a room full of people to raise their hands. Look at the greater picture here, everyone is being baited into fighting over stupid features, and Bitcoin, BitcoinXT or whatever it ends up being is losing its credibility.


*Edit* sorry going off topic a bit, so how this all relates back to the topic. Bitcointalk as an organization has no allegiance to Bitcoin core, Bitcoin XT, or any set of developers. It has an obligation to preserve Bitcoin, which as I explained in jeopardy.

[Lauda]

Some people are so ignorant, when it comes to other peoples property. This "dictator" discussion is ridicolous!

Correct.

I am not so sure about it. I mean there are many people that are supporting bigger blocks on this forum but are explicitly against the XT. I am one of them and have seen many more names as the discussion was going on in many threads.
-snip-

Yes. Welcome to the club.

You can always argue and say "it's private, why don't you make your own one" but to be honest, that's a lame excuse. You also cannot just leave Facebook and use another social network if you don't like Zuckerberg's latest policy changes.
-snip-
I think bitcointalk is mostly okay, but on reddit, you can see a huge abuse of  power.

Nice analogy. Bitcointalk.org is a company now? BTCT is good. You can't even comprehend how this place would look like if there was no moderation or it was lacking/different.

-snip-
*Edit* sorry going off topic a bit, so how this all relates back to the topic. Bitcointalk as an organization has no allegiance to Bitcoin core, Bitcoin XT, or any set of developers. It has an obligation to preserve Bitcoin, which as I explained in jeopardy.

You've explained it in a way that I've not seen before. While that 99.9% might be impossible (even BIP100 needs only 90%) I agree with you with most points. However, you're wasting your time as your replies might be more valued somewhere else. No matter what you say, no matter how much evidence you provide, the other party will never admit to you being right and them being wrong.

[johnyj]

Yes, there should not be any kind of censorship, given all the talk truly represent the opinion of a true user

However, there are many ways to affect the atmosphere of a forum by intentionally creating lots of newbie account to post pro-XT posts and it is even enough to buy out several account to post every hour to flood the forum with lobby kind of information. This is commonly practiced in chinese forums when government paying out 0.5cny/post for some people to post pro-communist-party posts and attack other opinion, so that the whole forum is flooded with communist talk

So it can be difficult to remove this kind of spam and lobby posts. It is important to not let the forum become a political playground

[jonald_fyookball]

100% consensus is a myth.  If a fork happens then everyone still using one branch will be 100% in consensus.
Who society says gets to call themselves Bitcoin at the end of the day will likely be the economic majority and the minority will be a fringe.  The reality of how things play out doesn't give a shit about theories.

[da2ce7]

Bitcoin will continue to work just fine without ever having a hard fork.

For example X (window system) has 30years of backwards comparability, and still counting. - Backwards comparability is part of their user contract (note, this isn't a legal contract, rather just a contract that is kept by consensus by the Xorg developers).


If we never reach consensus for hard-forking Bitcoin, this is ok. Even if 90% hard-fork, the remaining 10% can still successfully run a bitcoin network. - This would enter into a Bitcoin civil war.

Another interesting fact is that is that is that Satoshi actually gets to decide what fork wins. People don't notice that in the case of a hard fork, Satoshi has a 1000000 BTC stake in both forks.  He can choose to sell his coins in one fork, buying more coins in the other. - This alone will dictate the winner of the fork.  So if Satoshi wants to stay at 1MB blocks - well nobody else can out-compete his economic power.

[Westin Landon Cox]

Another interesting fact is that is that is that Satoshi actually gets to decide what fork wins. People don't notice that in the case of a hard fork, Satoshi has a 1000000 BTC stake in both forks.  He can choose to sell his coins in one fork, buying more coins in the other. - This alone will dictate the winner of the fork.  So if Satoshi wants to stay at 1MB blocks - well nobody else can out-compete his economic power.

I've thought about this too. It was a relief to me to see evidence (e.g., the email from satoshi@vistomail.com) that Satoshi was against the XT fork.

[jonald_fyookball]

Another interesting fact is that is that is that Satoshi actually gets to decide what fork wins. People don't notice that in the case of a hard fork, Satoshi has a 1000000 BTC stake in both forks.  He can choose to sell his coins in one fork, buying more coins in the other. - This alone will dictate the winner of the fork.  So if Satoshi wants to stay at 1MB blocks - well nobody else can out-compete his economic power.

I've thought about this too. It was a relief to me to see evidence (e.g., the email from satoshi@vistomail.com) that Satoshi was against the XT fork.

doubtful Satoshi would use his influence like that.

Doubtful also that this email was from the real satoshi.

[DooMAD]

[img]-snip-[img]

If such scenario ever happens, good luck trying to convince the overwhelming majority that their version is not bitcoin.

Again, thats not how it works. You don't have to convince anyone of anything. Bitcoin is a protocol that is based on consensus, not who can pander to the most people. Frankly, this is really a no win situation. Both XT and Core have problems, rather than solving those problems, they are just fighting a publicity battle, which is causing a bigger issue. If Bitcoin works the way that people are trying to make it work, the way you suggest, it is the greatest security risk Bitcoin has ever had, and "Bitcoin" can be safely called dead unless its fixed. Block size issues need to be fixed, a solution that doesn't require 15Mb upload/download speeds to broadcast larger sized blocks needs to exist, anonymity things need to be added, amongst other things. But those can all wait, as soon as all it requires is a majority to modify Bitcoin, anyone who can buy support for whatever cause they want can, be that block size increases, block reward increase/decreases, etc.

Again, the protocol requires consensus. This isn't a majority rule system, because majority rule systems are not stable nor secure. While Theymos has expressed that he isn't a fan of XT's proposed changes, I believe his greater concern is the same I addressed a moment ago. The straight definition however of an Alt Coin, is a Blockchain/Coin that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin requires 99.9% concensus. Without that concensus its not Bitcoin, and therefor an alt coin.

*99.9% is just an aproximation, whatever the actual value is is aproximate 100% - statistical misrepresentations/margin of error etc, but its near 100%.

The thing is, achieving a near complete consensus among large groups of people with diametrical views is outright impossible (as shown) although it would be ideal. The only thing we can expect in the future is hard-forking by the of majority of economic participants and let the minorities decide if they follow or not. XT is the first but not the last of these kind of alternate client implementations. Don't fool yourself.

Waiting for a 99.9% consensus belongs to fantasy land at this point and will never happen.

Both points are correct in a way.  I'd feel much better about the process if all ideas were welcomed and taken seriously (assuming they're put out there with a level of seriousness and effort).  Unfortunately, the status quo is over-politicized were people resort to manipulation of discourse (trolling, sock-puppetry, marketing, deleting, banning, etc.) to prevent full debate and full consideration of alternatives.  Also, the development process feels closed and overly ideological. I get the sense that there are some core contributors that are not willing to seriously consider all serious proposals.  That seems like a breach of something, but I'm not sure what exactly (in law, contracts come with an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing - I feel like good faith negotiations are impossible to some extent; but I hope I'm wrong) - maybe this is a problem endemic of digital and distributed decision-making that a Ledger article could tackle. 

In short, consensus is ideal, but it only works when the decision makers are genuinely open to change.  When fingers are put in ears b/c of ideology, then true consensus is not possible in a growing ecosystem with diversity of ideas.  Instead, Bitcoin seems like its being held hostage.  Such an environment makes hard forks inevitable and necessary for those with different ideas.  I don't see how Gavin and Mike had any other choice with how they released XT given how hostile folks have been towards them and their proposal. I don't believe one person said - good effort, why don't you try tweaking X.  Or, here's what a blocksize increase BIP has to cover, this didn't cover it, make some edits and we'll look again.  From my perspective, the process lacks any real clarity, transparency, respect/professionalism, intellectual rigor, or regard for users.  This is what the XT brouhaha has been about, not blacklisting or blocksize or other nerd things that should be debated. 

Glad I'm not the only one seeing it that way.  From the offset it was presented as a binary choice, as if there were no room for compromise.  This seems to be why the debate always gets dragged back to this silly "XT vs Core" mindset.  But it was never going to be that simplistic.  We need to keep an open mind and not enough people are managing to do that.  When presented with a proposals for change, we should be looking at ways to make them better, not ways to shut them down.  Weigh up the pros and cons, suggest amendments and highlight potential pitfalls in a constructive way. 

I suspect that as soon as any proposal begins to gain traction and people start paying attention to it, the same group in such a haste to torpedo BIP101 without looking to negotiate or compromise will be repeating the same tactic, as if this were some game of whack-a-mole.  But the goal shouldn't be to slap down every proposal as quickly as possible without considering merit.  Such actions aren't conducive to a healthy debate and those attempting to do so should be disregarded.  I look forward to a far more positive discourse in future once we've isolated and sidelined the zealots.  With a community as abundant in intelligence as this one, we should be able to find a happy middle ground.  One that allows room for growth, but doesn't jeopardise decentralisation. 

If we can't manage that and the debate becomes increasingly divisive, then an inimical split is going to become ever more likely.