My node will run without blacklist, but not because censorship

in #witness4 years ago

There's a lot of talk about censorship on the internet these days. Most of these times I hear it, I immediately can't take the person serious any more.

no_censorship.png

Real censorship exists, and it is a serious problem. When it is illegal to pass on certain information, that is a violation of rights. When a platform doesn't want to publish your post, video or picture, that's their right. If you don't like it, switch the service provider. Don't give them the power to censor you and the problem is solved. Don't waste my time crying about it.

Even for a platform that wants to show as much as possible, filtering illegal things and excessive spam is a necessity. I want to use this post to say thank you to @themarkymark for his relentless effort to find and exterminate the spam networks. He got so much hate for it, I think everyone should think for a moment what an annoying task that is, and how the sites would look without him.

The great thing about blockchain is that the information is there, and nobody can ever censor it. If you don't like how the interface you use handles the data, you can set up your own. It's a tool which gives you freedom, it doesn't take away personal responsibility though.

In a few days there will be another option. When my hivemind instance is ready, I will configure it to not use a blacklist. It will be selectable on peakd, so anyone can try it out. I'm pretty sure most will quickly turn back to another node, because the amount of spam goes as far as making posts unrenderable. But the node is not a default node for any interface, so it's possible to do it. I clearly reserve the right to add a blacklist of my choice at any time.

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Nice initiative just to realize that some kind of control is still needed even if we love freedom !

Nice to see you around and drop by my blog when you have time, always a pleasure to read your comments.

Take care and stay safe !

Best,

@vlemon

Would be far more useful if we could select our own blacklists to add and check or uncheck different blacklists maintained by different groups.

As those are on the hivemind side, that's currently only possible with different nodes using different blacklists. The functionality you have in mind would need to be implemented on the interfaces.

Yeah, and would probably be a PITA to implement. But would also be pretty cool. Similar to how certain tools allow you to use different IP blocklists.

Different people do have different levels of what they think should be censored, even if they might not realize it. Some of it's just because you don't want to take the time to scroll through a bunch of junk. Or maybe you don't wanna see porn on your list, for example. Maybe you even just wanna disable certain things for a few minutes so you can quickly scroll through.

Combined with lists of people, would probably make it really easy to keep up on your friends posts, or quickly check for whatever posts you might like, when you don't have the time to go through your entire list.

Well, that answers my question too. I look forward to seeing how your industry might best avail the community of greater censorship resistance, and deeply appreciate your investment in Hive's future.

I agree @themarkymark is a true hero.

Also, thanks for making you node censorship proof.

Options, that is what is nice about block chain level applications. I appreciate your offering up a node, which I am sure is not a cheap thing to do, to allow us a place to send the people to who decry the efforts of others to provide a clean option choice to those that want it.

Given that Hive is a community of stakeholders and thereby are invested in the network governed by their stake, clearly you are correct that it is up to them to determine what services and infrastructure to support.

And you certainly have a point that anyone dissatisfied with any good or service should just go get one they prefer, although this can be perhaps impossible for goods or services that require advanced specialties, such as complex social media platforms, particularly one like Hive, that has no peer.

Well, besides Steem, which censorship has utterly ruined today with more than 1% of SP locked up by code deployed by it's overlord.

I could not be more overjoyed at your unique provision of this opportunity to the community. As you imply, the value of spam prevention provided by @themarkymark, @drakos, @roadscape, and @redbeard is almost inconceivable, and with your generous investment in critical infrastructure you will single-handedly be proving to everyone on Hive of the need for preventing spam from malicious actors and the Yoeman's duty these spam-fighters perform.

The acquisition of this information will go a long ways to resolve my own aversion to seemingly harsh censorship measures affected users have bemoaned. Obviously, insincere complaint is to be expected from thwarted bad actors, as well as valid claims of those who have been unreasonably censored, and from their claims alone it is impossible to tell them apart. But, this will prove to everyone that the #blacklist team have made sound decisions for the good of the community. For my part, that would greatly resolve strong reservations I have had regarding the centralization of the censorship power that must exist for the good of the stakeholders on Hive, and now, better yet, that reservation has been potentially removed.

By configuring the node so that users can deploy the #blacklist to affect their feed from the API on the node (which, not being a coder, I may be incorrectly assuming is simply a matter of a few lines of code specifying where the particular instance of the stream from the node is drawing it's #blacklist from) the potential forced censorship by a Sun Yuchen, or even our intrepid spam fighters, would become impossible - as long as the node itself remains uncensored otherwise.

It is now possible to users themselves, rather than a centralized authority of the aforementioned censors, to deploy their own blacklists, for their own feeds, because the raw feed from the blockchain will be available to them, and the simple mechanism of removing and adding back accounts to the extant blacklist(s) will serve to enable per-account precision of their personal blacklists. Certainly the value of the #blacklist to the community will become more apparent, and with users themselves being able to control who on it they do, or don't, want in their feed, the #blacklist becomes a kernel of that ability long sought on Steem to utterly mute trolls and flags.

Folks might prefer to enable community admins or mods to undertake maintenance of a blacklist, or the original crew above, if it's more trouble to them than they like. This flexibility optimizes the API tool that Sun Yuchen has seized solitary option to deploy, and now on Hive it is the individual users themselves that will have this power.

A better solution to optimize the decentralization of censorship on Hive, empower communities, and resolve concerns about centralization of censorship that has destroyed Steem already isn't apparent to me, and you deserve great kudos for arriving at it. I will certainly vote on your HPS proposal to fund this node as long as you provide it, and I hope everybody joins me in this revolution of decentralization of DPoS. It's truly that profound IMHO.

Or have I misunderstood that a node can be configured to feed a particular user from a particular #blacklist? Must only all users or none draw from data filtered by one particular list? That would be tragic. If that is the case, then I suppose the next layer of the stack would be the UI's. Have you discussed with dapp devs applying such filters per their users customization in that event?

Such a profound distribution of censorship resistance is of inestimable value in preventing what has happened on Steem from happening on Hive. Sun Yuchen could then only censor himself on Hive, not the community. LOL let me know which tree I have barked up wrong, and which might bear fruit.

Thank you.

If it's blocked on the node, that will always use the same blacklist. The effort to change the code to let the user add these doesn't seem worth the benefits to me.

It will be visible which node uses which blacklist though, at least @asgard is planning to add this to peakd.

Filtering just on the interface still leaves open cases where a lot of spam would make the loading of a page extremely slow. The irredeemables blacklist is a last resort, and should only contain accounts who seriously influence user experience.

The current list is at https://github.com/hivevectordefense/irredeemables/blob/master/full.txt btw, and anyone can create issues or pull requests to add/remove users.

"Filtering just on the interface still leaves open cases where a lot of spam would make the loading of a page extremely slow."

I might be wrong, but don't API calls exist that can pull only particular posts/comments given an author and a permalink?

Given careful coding on the part of the interface developer(s), would it not be possible to make network requests only for comments/posts from users that don't appear on a local blacklist?

Still I suppose you might end up getting thousands of permalinks and account names that have to be loaded. I'd reckon that'd be faster than the naive process of simply dumping the whole comment tree either way.

An API call returning a list of all accounts who commented on a post with single appearances, combined with a call which returns all the replies to a given post by a given author would seem able to prevent any loading issues from spam comments.

These types of calls seem technically possible to me, but whether they actually exist today is a different matter. I have limited experience reading data from public remote RPC nodes, but I'm a far cry from having memorized all the API calls.

These considerations have got me thinking about getting into Hive backend development...

While I'm on the topic, do you have a list of all the API calls supported by your new nodes?

I am deeply grateful for your attention to this matter, and I reckon the entire Hive community should be as well. You seem to be a man that knows how things on Hive can be done, knows the people that do them, and can get shit done in a timely way.

I cannot thank you enough, but I do sincerely thank you.

The more nodes the better we appreciate it over here.

Great idea! This will let everyone know just how vital the prevention of spam really is.

"When a platform doesn't want to publish your post, video or picture, that's their right. If you don't like it, switch the service provider. Don't give them the power to censor you and the problem is solved. Don't waste my time crying about it."

Wait... isn't the censorship on Steem right now just fine then?

It's pathetic, but it's "censored" only on their own platform, they can do with that whatever they want.

Well, I still own a piece of it, because I haven't finished my powerdown. I'm hoping I get to before my little stake gets frozen.

You own some of the Steem, but you own none of the Steemit. 😉

Only one person owns any Steemit I am aware of, and I doubt I'd like the company - in either sense.

@pharesim, I have downvoted your post to (maybe) get your attention. Which, to me, makes about as much sense as you choosing to downvote my Palm Sunday post ...

I will happily remove it, when you have responded to my request (on my post, which now shows "muted" in Curangel ...) for an explanation as to why. Note I did not say an explanation with which I agree. It is very simply the request for the "professional courtesy" of letting me know why ...

For posting something unrelated in the curangel community, as the mute message states.

Okay, thank you for providing a response @pharesim. As committed, I have removed my downvote.

"... as the mute message states."

I don't know where this is. Where would I find / see it?

As I state in my original comment, you were one of the first Witnesses I supported, after my first post in May 2018. Based on a recent azircon post encouraging it, I recently also delegated 1,000 HIVE to @curangel.

Before electing to publish for the first time to the Curangel Community, I checked the "About" screen, which shows this:

So ... Since you downvoted me for "posting something unrelated in the curangel community' would you care to enlighten me as to what is related to the Curangel Community? Or provide me a link to read up on it somewhere?

Thank you.

@roleerob. It is a common confusion. Curangel is not like other communities. Since one of the founding concept of Curangel is "far and wide" curation, it doesn't require posting in it's own hive. As per Pharesim, curangel hive is dedicated for project related posting only. In other words, almost nothing will be posted in Curangel hive, except project related news. Hope this is helpful to you.

Okay, understood @azircon. Now ...

You or someone may wish to make that more clear on the Community's About page.

Why? Do you go to Reddit and post something about sailing in the gardening community? Use your brains people.

Also, there's only 1 post by curangel in there, you didn't even bother to check that. I'd downvote again if I could.

Why indeed. While certainly possible @pharesim, you be would hard-pressed to have provided a more graceless response than this one. One of your key supporters, @azircon, is willing to acknowledge ”a common confusion,” into which I have also managed to stumble. An acknowledgement to which I provided a typical response, from my long professional career …

If this challenges you, then to your condescending and arrogant doubled-down response, you could always add some profanity. Throw in some exclamation points, some emoticons, some CAPITAL LETTERS, perhaps? Whatever … Knock yourself out …

”I'd downvote again …” Oh well rally “the troops” then! Surely you have considerably more resources to throw “into the battle” against the likes of an account like mine. At a glance, through my posts and comments, it should be obvious to one and all that it should be driven “down and out” …

My primary interest in participating on this blockchain is as an investor. To the extent the likes of you and responses like yours represent far too common an example of what the average person will encounter “in here,” it is hard to imagine the price of its tokens ever “breaking out” much to the upside. Over my almost 2 years, I have “watched” as at least as many appear to leave “out the back door” as enter “through the front door.” As the price has slowly, but relentlessly, declined …

Fancy yourself a “doorman” @pharesim? Your “value proposition” to newcomers then? Graceless, condescending, and arrogant … Keep up the great work …


While never challenging one’s intelligence, from time to time, I do state that intelligence should never be confused with wisdom. They are certainly not the same thing. I could “spell out” for you the reason I bring this up, but being the clever fellow you are, I am sure you are “way ahead of me,” so I won’t waste any more of your precious time.

Instead, I will invest my last bit of time “engaging” with you in actions, rather than words:

So, you can now rest in peace and be assured your efforts were not in vain. My annoying + 31 MVests in support of your Witness are now removed. My irksome delegation and subscription to your community is now gone. It is very unlikely I will ever be “troubling” you again.

enough of your fuckin abuse

Show me on that teddy doll where uncle pharesim touched you 🤣

i didn't know markymark was so obsessed with ridding spam and abuse, thank god we have him doing that. i would go nuts.

I came here because it seems I got blacklisted. Obviously in my opinion it's not fair. More. It's a blatant abuse of administrative rights. No word of explanation. Nothing. Great way to discourage anybody who wants to be serious about publishing on hive.

I can see your posts