Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Friday November 02 2018, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Doge-coin-in-my-wallet dept.

From the very richest Forbes Magazine (reprint) come news of a nefarious plot:

There's no better example of the power, and the terror, inspired by blockchain than Gab.com, the social network used by the accused Pittsburgh synagogue gunman to threaten Jews.

About a month and a half before the alleged gunman made good on those threats by opening fire in a Pittsburgh synagogue and killing 11 people, Gab submitted paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $10 million via an initial coin offering (ICO). The offering, dated September 18, 2018, has so far received commitments to raise $5.6 million in capital for the "free speech" social network, which is a favorite of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other members of the "alt-right."

Since the shooting on Saturday, Gab has been shut down by a host of mainstream services including payment processors Stripe and Paypal, Web-hosting company Joyent and briefly, domain registry GoDaddy. But that might not matter, because Gab has already taken the first step toward freeing itself from dependence on traditional infrastructure and support mechanisms, thanks to its funding via the ethereum blockchain. Ultimately Gab's goal is to build an entire ecosystem beyond the reach of centralized authorities—whether Facebook, Twitter or venture capitalists—making it nearly indestructible. On this, the tenth anniversary of the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper, which gave birth to bitcoin, Gab epitomizes the darker consequences of his vision.

[...] Gab can also use other blockchain services if mainstream providers try to kick it off the internet by refusing to provide critical services. If Gab needs to replace GoDaddy for domain service (the addresses people use to find websites), Ethereum Name Service provides domains for decentralized applications built on the ethereum blockchain. Web hosting? No problem. Ethereum's Substratum provides a decentralized alternative to Joyent. Others have already pioneered the idea. PeepEth is a nascent ethereum-powered social network, and Mastadon is a blockchain-based Twitter.

Previously: Social Media and the Pittsburgh Shooter: Gab.com Going Down


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @04:39PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @04:39PM (#756909)

    >I like the concept of Gab: an uncensored social media platform needs to exist.

    Not really. Twitter is extremely tolerant toward terrible people, so you have to be a monster to get kicked off and wind up on Gab.
    Gab itself is not uncensored. You just have to be too awful for the other monsters to get kicked off of Gab.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 02 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 02 2018, @06:13PM (#756978) Journal

    Twitter is extremely tolerant toward terrible people, so you have to be a monster to get kicked off and wind up on Gab.

    Twitter has become much less tolerant of what they consider bad behavior. It released anti-harassment tools starting around November 2016, and has been more responsive to user reports and bans more users. Your characterization of Twitter and what you need to do to get banned there is subjective, and probably outdated. Of course, not everyone is satisfied by Twitter's responses and level of commitment to free speech. It may become even easier to be kicked off Twitter in the future.

    Twitter has also been demanding phone verification from some users, which could prevent trolls from making too many accounts and give Twitter a way to throw unlawful users to the police.

    Gab itself is not uncensored. You just have to be too awful for the other monsters to get kicked off of Gab.

    Then Gab is not an uncensored social media platform, and is not the end goal. Only a decentralized platform can truly take on this role.

    Of course, with an actually uncensored platform you run the risk of being exposed to a lot. Unless it has a text-only mode and you don't click any links.

    A voting system based on sending small fractions of cryptocurrency might be able to determine post quality (according to users, so it could be skewed depending on what the users want to see).

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @08:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @08:46PM (#757069)

      Twitter has become much less tolerant of what they consider bad behavior.

      Heh, coulda fooled me. Trump still has an open account.

      What's cool about the internet is that if twitter censors with a heavy hand, people will seek out alternatives, and there are plenty, better than gab. Obviously the best ones are decentralized and as close as peer to peer as you will ever get when you have to go through an ISP... but there they are, so complaining about twitter is kinda dumb.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @09:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @09:13PM (#757078)

    He had both Twitter and Facebook accounts.

    Why didn't Twitter and Facebook get shut down? It's only fair. They should lose their DNS, their data center cages, their merchant accounts for financial transactions... just that same as gab.ai suffered.

    This whole thing smells like leftist/globalist corporate executives waiting for an excuse. They had this planned, just as they did for Alex Jones. Who else are they planning to eliminate?