Mixers to be banned

[alani123]

I locked all of the mixer ANN threads I saw, and I put in a number of wordfilters. If I missed any threads, please use "report to moderator".

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

We can make decentralized forum software. It'll probably remain experimental and unstable for many years but should work eventually.
If we have decentralized money, how hard would it be to have a decentralized forum?
Mastodon is trying to do this, it's not great, it works, but probably there will be better iterations with a completely different backend design in the future also.

The issue still is that bitcoin still needs some presence in what's dubbed as the clearnet while decentralized social platforms become popularized.
Most of the people that have taken up the task aren't anonymous in doing so and therefore have to abide to their country's laws while hosting such contents.
The person who owns the bitcoin.org domain recently was asked (in a default court judgment against him) to pay an exorbitant fine for simply not wanting to be represented in UK court eponymously (with his real identity).
And to think that bitcoin.org only hosts completely informational stuff, no opinions, no discussion, no politics. Just code, tutorials, links to wallets etc. Nothing even remotely controversial.

Theymos keeping this forum within legal bounds probably played a role in popularizing bitcoin. This needs to continue.
But no matter how decentralized the backend of a platform is, if it needs administration there's liability and real people can't really be decentralized. Only maybe have their identity concealed but even then the above issues apply.
Even mastodon is facing this issue where certain instance admins will ban certain forms of speech either because they don't like it or don't want legal issues where they live. And in addition some will ban users from instances that don't have the same bans as them...

This is actually a hard problem to solve. If a platform needs intelligence for moderation, how do you remove liability so authorities can't just shut it down with targeted arrests?

[OgNasty]

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

This. We should always strive for more decentralization.

Maybe someone should take up donations for development of a new forum. 

Happy New Year!

[KingsDen]

I locked all of the mixer ANN threads I saw, and I put in a number of wordfilters. If I missed any threads, please use "report to moderator".

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

Theymos himself is seriously anticipating this, he did say it.

[cryptosize]

I reckon we can have a decent decentralized forum protocol if FTTH (100 Mbps upload) becomes the baseline.

With ADSL (1 Mbps upload) it's not really possible... ADSL is fine for BTC, that's why Satoshi released it in 2009 (when ADSL was already becoming the norm).

[digaran]

There were some projects in the past, I don't know if they are still alive or even applicable for such a task, if I'm not mistaken, storj or something, maybe golem etc? Is there any already available solutions for decentralizing a forum?

[JackMazzoni]

There were some projects in the past, I don't know if they are still alive or even applicable for such a task, if I'm not mistaken, storj or something, maybe golem etc? Is there any already available solutions for decentralizing a forum?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-to-host-a-decentralized-website

[nutildah]

So, another "AI" generated picture and you didn't have the balls to spell MIXERS properly and worse the gravestone gives the impression that mixers are dead or die out by the end of 2023. Well, reality is different: only advertisement for mixers is more or less dead in this forum, that's all. It will hurt mixers and cause users other problems when scammers take advantage of this ban.

Put on your bifocals, take a closer look, and I think you'll see "Mixers" is spelled quite adequately.

Regardless, who are you, and what killed your sense of humor?

[digaran]

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

This. We should always strive for more decentralization.

Maybe someone should take up donations for development of a new forum. 

Happy New Year!

Since we are still on the first day of a new year and all feel jolly, I'd say we should also find a fork escrow in case those donations end up being multiplied by some unforeseen forks in the future. 😂😂😂

I'm acting like karma, a total bi*ch. 😉
@nutildah, where do you find those memes? I love it how you are spot on, yeah cricksomething, show some respect.
May I remind everyone that we have been sucker-punched by the state when they announced their take down on forum? Start thinking what to do to stop them from coming here again. What could be their next target and how we could fight against their absurd tyranny.?

[pooya87]

Maybe someone should take up donations for development of a new forum.

Money doesn't seem to be the issue here. The problem is lack of new ideas and lack of motivated people to execute them. And lets not forget that nobody paid Satoshi Nakamoto to create the decentralized money we call Bitcoin.

Happy New Year!

Happy holidays.

...New Year in the middle of winter, it never made sense to me

[hugeblack]

Maybe someone should take up donations for development of a new forum. 

Regarding funding, what is new about ---> Forum funds, especially since @DarkStar_ is no longer active, and I also see that 24 Bitcoins were spent several weeks ago.

[shield132]

In the forum as far as a huge number of farmed-accounts and alt-accounts are concerned, will the lack of opportunities to earn a regular income equate to less spam, less flooding and less merit abuse? The only to know definitively is to allow time but if the spammers leave the forum they will not be missed and that cannot be a bad thing.

Thinking to all the mixer related campaigns we had, majority of the ones I remember were managed expertly and did not encourage spam at all. Many of the users on those campaigns will also be welcome into existing campaigns or have been already.

What action will have a significant effect on spam will be stopping bounty campaigns and signature campaigns altogether.

Chipmixer campaign participants were goats. To be fair, it's the signature campaign manager's responsibility to hire high-quality posters but since some of them are limited to budget and pay a low amount of money, high-quality posters prefer to stay away from such signature campaigns while the manager still needs to hire people and then they are simply forced to hire spammers. High-paying campaigns get rid of spam.

I locked all of the mixer ANN threads I saw, and I put in a number of wordfilters. If I missed any threads, please use "report to moderator".

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

We don't even have a mobile app. Epochtalk development is stopped.

[LoyceV]

I reckon we can have a decent decentralized forum protocol if FTTH (100 Mbps upload) becomes the baseline.

With ADSL (1 Mbps upload) it's not really possible...

Any decentralized solution that needs more than 1 Mbps continuously sounds terrible! And the main problem I have with anything decentralized is that it won't work in a browser, you'll need to install software and download everything. Those drawbacks are probably the reason why it isn't used on a large scale. I mind downloading 100+ GB on my desktop, but for mobile users, decentralization is almost impossible.
And even if you get that working: how are you going to download it to get started? Centralized on Github?
Most of the things that claim to be decentralized, aren't decentralized.

Chipmixer campaign participants were goats.

Say what?

[joker_josue]

Most of the things that claim to be decentralized, aren't decentralized.

That's right. Most people I hear talk about decentralization, from their words, know little about how things really work. How the internet works and how they can access information.

[JackMazzoni]

I reckon we can have a decent decentralized forum protocol if FTTH (100 Mbps upload) becomes the baseline.

With ADSL (1 Mbps upload) it's not really possible...

Any decentralized solution that needs more than 1 Mbps continuously sounds terrible! And the main problem I have with anything decentralized is that it won't work in a browser, you'll need to install software and download everything. Those drawbacks are probably the reason why it isn't used on a large scale. I mind downloading 100+ GB on my desktop, but for mobile users, decentralization is almost impossible.
And even if you get that working: how are you going to download it to get started? Centralized on Github?
Most of the things that claim to be decentralized, aren't decentralized.

Chipmixer campaign participants were goats.

Say what?

There should be some form of rewards to those who seeds like tokens.

[FatFork]

Most of the things that claim to be decentralized, aren't decentralized.

That's right. Most people I hear talk about decentralization, from their words, know little about how things really work. How the internet works and how they can access information.

Most of the people calling for decentralized everything obviously don't understand the complexities of decentralized systems or the realities of internet communication. They often have unrealistic expectations about what decentralization can achieve and overlook the potential drawbacks.

Centralized databases do seem to be efficient and scalable, no doubt about it.  But, distributed data systems have some stuff going for them too.  Redundancy, fault tolerance... Still they don't seem truly decentralized since they still have some kind of centralized control mechanism happening under the hood. 

I figure centralized databases are gonna keep on being the main way we store data for a while.  People stick with what they know works decently enough already.

[cryptosize]

I reckon we can have a decent decentralized forum protocol if FTTH (100 Mbps upload) becomes the baseline.

With ADSL (1 Mbps upload) it's not really possible...

Any decentralized solution that needs more than 1 Mbps continuously sounds terrible! And the main problem I have with anything decentralized is that it won't work in a browser, you'll need to install software and download everything. Those drawbacks are probably the reason why it isn't used on a large scale. I mind downloading 100+ GB on my desktop, but for mobile users, decentralization is almost impossible.
And even if you get that working: how are you going to download it to get started? Centralized on Github?
Most of the things that claim to be decentralized, aren't decentralized.

Bitcoin's source code is also stored on GitHub. Does that mean it's centralized?

And what about people spending BTC on their mobile wallet? Do they have to store the entire blockchain to claim it's a decentralized currency?

I'm pretty sure 20 years ago BTC would seem like a crazy idea... I know, because I first read about the idea of a decentralized, PKI-secured currency back in 2003 (not BTC, since it didn't exist), but nobody could pull it off until Satoshi solved the Byzantine Generals problem.

How can you be so sure that we won't have yet another breakthrough in the future?

[JollyGood]

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

I cannot search for that link now but if I recall correctly theymos stated that he had various attempts at making firewalls to protect the forum from DDoS but he could never find a way to meaningfully mitigate it therefore he used Cloudflare. It is my understanding that theymos had previously stated it was his belief Cloudflare was a honeypot but he nevertheless used it for the forum because of convenience.

Maybe someone should take up donations for development of a new forum.  

Regarding funding, what is new about ---> Forum funds, especially since @DarkStar_ is no longer active, and I also see that 24 Bitcoins were spent several weeks ago.

For example if calculated at around $40,000 each, it would make 24 BTC worth around $960,000 and that is a lot of money. If these are supposed to be forum funds where were these BTC spent if they were spent recently?

[joker_josue]

Bitcoin's source code is also stored on GitHub. Does that mean it's centralized?

But, you have no idea what a site like this forum is, with such "decentralization", do you?

In fact, for you, what is decentralized?
It's just that not even torrents - perhaps the most decentralized products that exist on the internet - are really decentralized. 

[cryptosize]

Bitcoin's source code is also stored on GitHub. Does that mean it's centralized?

But, you have no idea what a site like this forum is, with such "decentralization", do you?

In fact, for you, what is decentralized?
It's just that not even torrents - perhaps the most decentralized products that exist on the internet - are really decentralized.  

Arguing for the sake of arguing much?  

You didn't answer my questions, you just keep making new questions demanding answers...

If nothing is truly decentralized (not even BitTorrent), then it all seems an exercise in futility.

ps: Did you personally know what it would take to create something like Bitcoin back in 2003?

There were many naysayers back then, I can assure you...

[joker_josue]

Arguing for the sake of arguing much?  

You didn't answer my questions, you just keep making new questions demanding answers...

What answer do you want me to answer?
How am I going to talk about a technology that doesn't exist today, or rather that isn't viable for a forum of this size, mainly because I don't have the resources to invent something like that?

What I can say is that creating a decentralized forum today is impossible and completely unfeasible.

The example I gave was torrent, not BitTorrent. BitTorrent is a torrent client, which is clearly not decentralized.
Do you know how torrent works? So imagine the same for the website. How can an ordinary person access a website, without having to install specific software, download the entire database that can be larger than a 4K Blu-ray movie, and then browse?

But wait, it only takes 1 byte to depend on one person, so it won't be decentralized.

Is Bitcoin decentralized? Yes, yours because anyone can set up a node and run it. But, Bitcoin is linear and not dynamic. It is mathematical work, always the same, that always produces the same type of data. A forum is highly dynamic, where all users produce different content, where features change over time, and many other things happen in a matter of seconds.

It cannot be compared when the type of data transmitted is always the same, with other services that are very varied in terms of data. The greater the data variation, the more complex and longer the processing process.

I'm not saying that in the future there won't be something really functional that makes this type of site decentralized. But at the moment it doesn't exist. Therefore, I cannot demand the forum to become decentralized.