In war, one of the first moves is to attack the communication infrastructure of the enemy. Being generally organized military forces with centers of operations that receive orders from the center of command which usually answers and receives orders from a civilian structure, usually headed by the "head of the state" (president or prime minister, in most cases), if the communication lines are taken out, armed forces are beheaded.
It's what was attempted and succeeded in Ukraine at the beginning of the war, but Elon Musk stepped in and gave the Ukrainians access to Starlink.
In both cases, before and after Starlink, we are talking about permissioned communications for Ukranians, including their special communications for the army.
Since Russians were able to take them out and then Musk offered Starlink to them (which at some point he threatened to take back as he often throws words in the wind to see the effect they produce).
This is an extreme case to describe permissioned communication which go directly to the internet infrastructure. Of the same category is the phone system infrastructure. The idea is if the physical infrastructure is damaged (like in a war), you either have a backup or you have no communications.
AI-generated image with Canva, since I couldn't find a proper one free. Yes, I know it spelled Stop wrong, but the other images were much worse. Looks like AI still has a lot to learn.
But there are less critical situations, which are still permissioned. My attention was brought on them after listening to Task in the latest Cryptomaniacs episode. Things like:
- phone calls (when the infrastructure is intact, but calls go through operators)
- emails (not really?)
- live streams
- many chat systems (not all)
- traditional social media and most alternatives
are examples of permissioned communication. Someone is in the middle and can say no or block a certain conversation, one party to the conversation, a group, entire geographical areas, or shut down the entire platform (or parts of it) for as long as needed. I'm curious if a powerful intermediary could remove the possibility of two or more determined individuals to communicate via email. I think you can set the entire route your email will take from source to destination, which may be one way to avoid controlling email servers.
How about comments on blogs? Can they be blocked? I suppose they can be blocked for something like blogs hosted by Wordpress, but unlikely for self-hosted blogs. And what do you block? How many blogs are out there? Do you force the plethora of small hosting companies to take down these websites? That would be a desperate measure and with very little chances of success.
How about permissionless communication? That's what we have on Hive.
One way we can do this is through comments on Hive blogs. How do you turn those down? Close down the interfaces? In how many jurisdictions? We have ways to spin up new standard or custom interfaces for our Hive blogs with a few clicks (they keep improving).
Someone might argue that comments (and posts) can be hidden through downvotes or, inside a community, by choice of moderators. Hidden doesn't mean removed though, even if it may not be as easy to be viewed by more people.
But here's a communication method that cannot be censored except by hardfork. And that is by sending a memo to someone. Sure, unlike a comment, a memo costs a minimum of 0.001 HIVE or HBD liquid to send, instead of some regenerable RCs. And the memo can be in plain text or encrypted, which makes it a powerful means of communication. Nobody stands in between this type of communication if a random node adds it to the blockchain.
Permissionless communication doesn't become important until someone is denied the regular means of communication and they have important messages to deliver. Then, they would really love to have that option.
Posted Using LeoFinance Alpha
I didn't even know that Ukrainians also have access to Starlinnk
That's a good one!
Well... this is from the category of... geopolitics and strategic moves.
Interesting share. I had a good read.
Thanks.
This is very informative, and is I think one of the biggest arguments for the blockchain as a whole. The usual purpose is just as an option to not be controlled by governments and banks. In worst case scenarios, banks and governments can't freeze your accounts, take your assets [maybe the physical crypto wallets], or your money being affected by their crash. As the blockchain technology has been used in other places and technology, we see more of the advantages it can offer.
Full asset ownership in games, and being more in control of what you do with them. Hive and social media, overcoming suppression and all the other things you said in your post. It really should be a matter of time before the public embraces blockchain.
Unfortunately, the crypto space is becoming more and more centralized and prone to censorship. Hive is almost an island in this regard. It's a big difference from the initial ideals in crypto and what they have become (or will very soon).
Permissionless is quite tough but what happens when people don't have internet? Even Hive won't help you if you don't have internet or electricity. In a way, almost everything requires some permission to an extent but Hive is way better compared to the rest because we wouldn't require a service to act as our intermediatory.
That is true and I thought about it too. Well, the electricity we started to produce ourselves. On the internet side things are a bit tricky. Hive doesn't work without it, although, pushed to the extreme, Blocktrades said Hive would survive if, for example, the internet connection between America and Europe is cut, but either of the two continue to work. On the individual level, it's true, if you don't have access to the internet, you don't have access to Hive. But I think this is true for banks too. Their connection between branches works over the internet.
I didn't have much knowledge before, after reading your post, my knowledge about this topic has increased.
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Hello, @gadrian thank you for this article about Permissionless Communication! Your AI generated image is cute and yes can't spell but it's still cute LOL. Have a great week! Barb !BBH !CTP #ctp
And the image turns out nice