V God issued a document: Fully agree to delist BSV
Editor's Note: This article comes fromMars Finance (ID: hxcj24h)Editor's Note: This article comes fromvitalikMars Finance (ID: hxcj24h)
, author Du Huitang Chu Xingjuan Liang Yushan; original text from
, author Vitalik Buterin (V god); reprinted with authorization by Odaily.
"Totally agree and support delisting BSV."
On April 15, Binance announced the delisting of BSV, which aroused heated discussions in the industry. At a time when many exchanges and industry celebrities have expressed their views, V God, the founder of Ethereum, also made his point of view clear.
In addition, Vitalik also responded to the outside criticism of Binance’s delisting of BSV. He pointed out that freedom of speech is a topic that troubles many people, and he considered writing an article to talk about his views on this topic.
On the same day, Vitalik published a 10,000-word long article entitled "On Freedom of Speech" through his personal blog, fully presenting his views on the speeches in the encryption community, the frontal conflict with Satoshi Aomoto, and the pros and cons of Binance's delisting of BSV. The full text contains 4 main points:
V God pointed out that speeches in public spaces must follow the rules of public spaces, and those who violate the rules will be punished accordingly. Satoshi Omoto needs to be punished, so he fully agrees to delist BSV;
V God responded to the frontal conflict with Ao Bencong at the Deconomy Summit last year, saying that industry summits and Internet forums belong to two different public contexts. ;
V God said that the removal of BSV is not to prevent investors from trading BSV, and he also opposes the exchange's "casual" removal of tokens. But the delisting did trigger strong social condemnation of BSV, which is useful and necessary;
V God believes that opposing centralization is just to make people realize that centralization is harmful and abused, not to make people oppose everything that centralization does.
“A sentence can be both true and dangerous. The preceding sentence is just that.” —David Friedman
Free speech is an issue that many internet communities have fought hard to defend over the past 20 years. The cryptocurrency and blockchain community, whose main quest is to combat censorship resistance, takes freedom of expression very seriously. In the past few years, the ultra-high-speed growth of the encryption community and the extremely high financial and social risks have repeatedly verified the application and limitations of this concept. In this article, I hope to unravel some of the contradictions, while providing an example of what the true standard of "free speech" really is.
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"Free Speech Act" VS "Freedom of Speech"
A common, but in my opinion discouraging, view is that "free speech laws" refer exclusively to legal restrictions on actions that governments can take against private entities, without explanation. It covers private entities including corporations, private platforms, Internet forums and industry conferences. In the encryption community, a typical case of "private censorship" is the "Theymos" resolution-theymos, the moderator of the /r/bitcoin sub-board of the Reddit community, decided to strictly censor the board and prohibit members from discussing Bitcoin hard forks to increase transaction capacity.
(https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-history-of-censorship-in-r-bitcoin-c85a290fe43）
△Translation: You can promote BIP 101 as an idea, but you can't promote it (in the bitcoin forum on /r/bitcoin) for actual use. Bitcoin is not a democracy, nor does it belong to miners, nor does it belong to nodes. Switching to XT is not a vote on BIP 101. It became a separate network/currency after abandoning Bitcoin. It's nice that you have the freedom to do it. One of the particularly beautiful qualities of Bitcoin is its lack of democracy. Even if 99% of people use Bitcoin, you still have the freedom to implement BIP 101 on a separate currency without being democratically coerced by other Bitcoin users into using the real Bitcoin network/currency. But I'm not obligated to start a subreddit subreddit for Bitcoin, and I'm not going to.
（https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/John Blocke puts together a review timeline for the /r/bitcoin subreddit of the Reddit community
Below is a post from Reddit moderator Theymos defending his policing decision
), the thread contained the infamous resolution - "If 90% of the /r/bitcoin subreddit finds this agreement unacceptable, then I will let the 90% go".
Those who support Theymos' censorship decision often use the argument that heavy-handed management is okay because the /r/bitcoin subreddit is Theymos' "private forum" where they have the right to do whatever they want , People who don't like it can go to other forums.
△Translation: Party: I hope that the Bitcoin core team can recover the losses caused by Theymos, and Bitcoin can rely on decentralization. What can the community rely on?
Neo: Theymos created a private forum, not affiliated with the Bitcoin Core dev team. The community relies on Bitcoin, so let's keep it decentralized.
△Translation: BCH is not censored, it has its own Reddit sub-board (and affiliated network), and everyone can discuss it on it. Equating censorship of the Bitcoin Reddit forum with censorship mechanisms in the usual sense seems to prove that most of it is political. Everyone is not censored in a specific private community. If BCH is on its own, (and we hope it is), then we don't need censorship. Those who think need not make BCH successful, they want to control Bitcoin. So it makes sense to ban people with such motives.
Layer2 is a solution for scalability. I thought, wouldn't that be the case in the future?
Well, the Theymos moderator really isn't breaking any laws by managing his forum this way. But for most people, there is still something about this management that could undermine free speech. This shows what? First, realize that freedom of speech is not just a law of a country, but a social principle. This is an important point. The fundamental goal of social principles is the same as that of law, that is—to create an environment for discussion. In this discussion environment, good ideas can win over the ideas of the masses, not the ideas promoted by the powerful. Nor is government power the only power that people want to protect. There is also the right of companies to fire an employee, the right of Internet forum moderators to delete posts, and various other forms of hard and soft power.
So, what are the basic social principles? Quoting Eliezer Yudkowsky's description:
"In human art of reason there are very few injunctions, no if, and, but or disclaimer clauses (of computer language). This is one of them. Bad points get rebutted, but not shot Kill. Never, never, never, never."
According to the Slatestarcodex website:
"What exactly does "bullet" refer to in the preceding citation? Does it include other projectiles? Arrowheads, boulders thrown from catapults, melee weapons such as swords or maces? Regarding "Inappropriate Responses to Controversy" , where exactly should we draw the line? When a debate occurs, a good response is a point of view that clarifies its idea; a bad one silences it completely. If you try to clarify an idea, success depends on How good the idea is; on the other hand, if you want to silence someone, your success depends on your strength. "Shooting a gun" can indeed silence a person completely without resolving an argument. Similarly, from throwing stones Throwing a boulder with a weapon, killing someone with a sword, or calling in a pitchfork-wielding mob are all effective ways to extinguish an idea. Trying to fire someone because he thinks differently is extinguishing the problem without solving it. One way of thinking."
This means that, in some cases, the basic premise of a "safe space" is that people who, for whatever reason, do not want to confront a particular point of view can come together. (As a representative case of "safe space"), the most harmless community may be a community like ethresear.ch, whose posts will only be deleted when they are "off-topic", so as to ensure that the discussion will not go wrong. Still, "safe spaces" have their dark side, as Ken White writes:
"(You) may be surprised that I am a supporter of "safe spaces". I support safe spaces because I believe in the idea of "free linking". If only designed according to the established way, "safe spaces" may only be An application of the idea of "free linking"... But not everyone thinks that "safe space" should look like this. Some people think of it as a sword, and think that if used correctly, "safe space" can become a threat to public space It effectively complements the requirement that people within the space adhere to their private norms. (To be clear) this is not freedom of association.”
So it's perfectly fine to create your own "safe space" in a small nook, but "common space" needs to be considered as well. Any attempt to turn "public space" into a "safe space" for special interests is wrong.
So, what is "public space"? Clearly, public space is not just "owned or operated by the government", it also includes private public space. Private public space is also a complete public space. Because of its informality in private public spaces, some words and deeds can be treated relatively tolerantly.
This phenomenon also fits with common moral intuitions. For example, if someone makes a racist or sexist statement in private, it will have less bad impact than if it is made in public. As far as the case of the Reddit community /r/bitcoin sub-forum is concerned, no matter who is the major moderator in the program, it is impossible to deny the fact that this sub-forum is a public space. The following evidence supports this:
It occupies the "prime real estate", especially the topic of "Bitcoin". This leads people to assume that this is the default place to discuss Bitcoin;
For a lot of people, the changes to their moderators' governance agreement came as a surprise to them, which obviously couldn't have been foreseen in advance.
If, instead, they created a subreddit called /r/bitcoinsmallblockers and made it clear that it was an exclusive space for a small number of node supporters and that discussions of hard fork controversies were not welcome, few people would probably feel wrong now. It’s just that no one pointed out that even people with opposite ideologies should have room for internal discussion. In reality, however, they are trying to "appropriate the public space and demand that others within it abide by their private norms". It is also for these reasons that we see the Bitcoin community split due to differences in block sizes, violent technical forks, and finally a cold peace between BTC and BCH.
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De-platform
About a year ago, at the Deconomy Summit, I publicly shouted at Satoshi Aomoto, the liar who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, questioning the organizers "why did this liar allow him to speak at the summit", while explaining "why do I think Ao Ben Cong's speech is meaningless."
Of course, supporters of Satoshi Aobaen also responded to me with an article titled "Allegations of Censorship":
△Translation: Why is Craig Wright (Satoshi Ao Ben) allowed to speak at such a conference? Vitalik hints that Dr. White's (Aoben Cong) college degree is not real.
The question itself is shocking enough, but what is even more shocking is that Miao Yongquan publicly agreed to the initiative of the censorship mechanism. Censoring other people's views is exactly what Blockstream and the Bitcoin Core development team have been accused of by many, including directly in the Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver debate. Now it's Miao Yongquan's turn. In front of the public, he advocates muting other people's speech.
I tried to make Satoshi Omoto "shut up"? of course not. Some people may object to me and say, "Huh, the Deconomy Summit is not a public space." But what I want to say is that an industry summit is completely different from an Internet forum. Internet forums can be a completely neutral medium no matter what happens.
But the Industry Summit is essentially a curated list of speakers, with limited speaking time carefully allotted so that those lucky enough to speak get a lot of attention. The Industry Summit is an event that has been "edited" by the organizers to convey the organizers' intent - "Here are the views and ideas we think are worth knowing and hearing". Every industry summit "censors" the views of all speakers because there are not enough opportunities for everyone to speak. This is a fixed pattern at industry summits. Therefore, it is absolutely legal to contest the meeting (I was at the Deconomy summit).
This extends to other types of selective platforms. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have all implemented autonomous selection with recommendation algorithms, which determine which content is more likely to be recommended to users. These platforms often operate in their own self-interest to maximize user engagement. Under normal circumstances, these practices will bring some unexpected negative effects, such as making conspiracy theories such as "the earth is flat" popular.
Therefore, considering that these platforms have started (automatic) personalized recommendations, and the recommended content is directed to the government’s more recognized pro-social goals, it is understandable for the outside world to criticize them. Of course, the "censorship system" did not seriously hinder people from understanding the story of Satoshi Ao Ben, and you can still visit their website (https://coingeek.com/). In short, if someone already runs a platform that outputs editorially screened content, it seems reasonable to have them output more pro-social standards to the same extent.
The latest case in line with this principle is the Twitter “Unlist BSV” campaign. Some cryptocurrency exchanges announced the delisting of BSV trading pairs (Bitcoin fork led by Satoshi Aomoto), the most famous representative of which is Binance Exchange. Many people (including some rationalists) therefore condemned the delisting of BSV as a form of censorship, and even compared it to credit card companies blocking WikiLeaks:
△Translation: This phenomenon shows that the cryptocurrency community is committed to fighting censorship, getting rid of agency and discrimination, and perhaps deciding to have the power to make rules for censorship.
Power transfer, not power decentralization.
Personally, I have always been a critic of the hegemony of centralized exchanges. So this time I will oppose the "delisting BSV" campaign based on the principle of freedom of speech? No, I support it.
Many of the participants in the “delist BSV” campaign like the Kraken exchange are not the kind of platforms that “do everything”. They make a lot of decisions about which tokens to accept and which to reject. Kraken only accepts a handful of tokens and they passively "censor" almost all projects. Shapeshift exchange supports more currencies, though it does not support SPANK, or even KNC.
So, in both Kraken and Shapeshift cases, delisting BSV is more like redistributing scarce resources (attention/legality) than censoring projects. Binance is a bit different, it follows the idea of everything being random, and it does accept a larger number of cryptocurrencies. It also has its unique position as a market leader with substantial liquidity.
In addition, the delisting will not make it difficult for people to trade BSV, and the encrypted exchange Coinex has stated that it will not delist BSV (in fact, I also object to exchanges "casually" delisting tokens). But the delisting did trigger a strong social condemnation of BSV, which is useful and necessary. So so far, there are reasons to support all exchanges to delist BSV. Although after some thinking, (I found that the opponents) advocated that Binance give up delisting BSV out of "freedom of speech" does have some truth.
in conclusion
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in conclusion
In short, opposition to centralization is often justified. But centralization is always there, so use that power for what you consider to be pro-social ends (see Brian Kaplan on coordinating support for open borders and support for anti-Ebola restrictions). Opposition to centralization just makes people believe that these centralizations are harmful and abused, not against everything they do.
