What's the business model? One of the problems with current social media is that their advertising-dependent business model relies on "engagement" and thus the platforms are built to encourage outrage, etc.
"The legal EOS Token Purchase Agreement is a frankly amazing document that everyone should read.[1] US citizens or residents are not to buy the tokens (though EOS assures us they totally don’t constitute a security – hear that, SEC?); the tokens are defined as not being useful in any manner whatsoever; forty-eight hours after the end of the distribution period, the tokens will no longer be transferable; the buyer promises not to purchase them for speculation or investment. If there’s any legal problems caused by you buying these officially worthless things, you agree to indemnify EOS."
You and David himself have posted about this, and I am glad you did. This looks pretty shady considering the parties involved and their past actions. I appreciate the context you bring to this post.
There is a push against anonymity on the internet, but I'm not convinced that is the best way. Not with the growing threat of cancel culture. I'd rather go the other direction and provide additional assurances of privacy.
Really? While there are excesses everywhere in all things, this it just silly. This is a point made in sympathy to the goals of a political campaign and not out of genuine fear.
People aren't going to stop using their real names for fear of being "cancelled", come on.
It's hard to imagine being so uncontroversial in your opinions, that you could afford not to even believe cancel culture is a real thing. Thing is, eventually everyone is targeted for one reason or another as the focus shifts, and over time the focus of the day will contradict the focus of the past.
I don't think I claimed it didn't exist, I claimed that the paranoia about it that exists right now on the American right is a fabrication. It's the theme that the Trump campaign has decided on running against (c.f. the speech at Mt. Rushmore[1]) which is why it's en vogue to talk about and no doubt why it sprung so readily to your fingers in a discussion about internet anonymity.
[1] For those old enough to remember "They hate us for our freedoms" and "Radical Islamic Terrorism", this obsession seems like pretty weak sauce, at least as existential threats go. Previous administrations could at least invoke the threat of death. The worst terrors of the modern conservative are apparently being yelled at by hippies on the internet.
cancel culture, as its commonly understood ("woke" scolds running well-meaning people out of public life) largely doesn't exist. There are a few high profile cases of it happening to actual sexual predators, otherwise it's as ephemeral as Fox News hosts hyping fear over the "knockout game".
Cancel culture is not just that. It is the 21st century version of ostracism.
She was not just "criticized" for it. You have industry-related websites now claiming to mention her only with hashtag #JKR. She's literally become "the one who shall not be named". Who knows what will come of any future project that she is working on. All of that for the very controversial opinion of "There is a word for 'people who menstruate' that the newspaper could've used"
Also Martina. One of the first openly gay tennis players, an actual defender of women's rights, "canceled" because she dared to say that trans-women would have an unfair advantage and should not be put to play with biologically-born women. The audacity...
> Who knows what will come of any future project that she is working on.
The future project is Ickabog, which continues its progress through publishing. Some staff tried saying they no longer wanted to work on anything by JKR, but their employer told them they had no choice and must continue to work on Ickabog or leave the company.
All her books remain in print. All her merch is still being sold.
Yet you are also refusing to use her name? Why is that?
> The multimillionaire JKR has not been cancelled.
It is not just who "gets cancelled" and who doesn't. It is about the threat. She is a multimillionaire with enough clout to survive this absurd backlash and to make her own gravity for her work if she needs to. Others aren't. Please let me know of any young and talented YA author that made any kind of "controversial" statement and still stayed around and I might start believing that cancel culture is not such a big threat as you seem to believe.
> I genuinely have no idea what you're getting at.
I mentioned articles that declared would only mention her by initials to avoid calling her name, you followed that pattern. If it was not deliberate, it was an interesting coincidence.
> It feels weird that to talk about cancel culture you pick someone who's at no risk of being cancelled.
No one can deny the fact that JK Rowling and Martina Navratilova were more than "criticized" for their "opinions". They were misrepresented in their views to create attrition with some minority group, then coerced into getting some kind of apology for saying something that in no way entices animosity towards said minority and still after that get their work and professional relationships harassed to try to get them ostracized.
This by itself is already is cancel culture, not the fact that people actually get canceled.
It feels even weirder that you are trying to minimize the harm caused by cancel culture by pointing out the fact that someone survived it.
Rowling was not misrepresented. She really said those things.
> then coerced into getting some kind of apology
She hasn't apologised. She's made no concessions. She's repeated what she said.
> harm caused by cancel culture by pointing out the fact that someone survived it
No, I'm pointing out that she was never at any risk at all from being cancelled.
You keep talking about how dangerous cancel culture is, and how people keep being attacked. But you're entirely one-sided in your "analysis". You've failed to account for JKR's 14 million followers that she uses to harass people. You never mention the people driven off platforms by the people you're defending. You cherry pick examples to try to get sympathetic victims, but when you do that you're unable to find anyone who actually got cancelled, and you provide examples of people who are at zero risk of cancellation and who keep saying whatever they want.
> You've failed to account for JKR's 14 million followers that she uses to harass people.
Unless you can actually point to a specific tweet where she sends her followers to harass someone, can you please drop the emotional rhetoric?
> you're unable to find anyone who actually got cancelled, and you provide examples of people who are at zero risk of cancellation and who keep saying whatever they want.
Oh, you mean survivorship bias? Yes, you are totally right! It is virtually impossible to find an up-and-coming talented writer who is able to express any controversial opinion without fearing for their careers. Why do you think is the more likely explanation: (a) every younger and talented writer shares the same world-view and are completely aligned with the vanguard of social justice or (b) every you writer is aware now that there are "things you can not say", i.e, cancel culture?
You make it sound like them saying "whatever they want" and "face no risk of cancellation" is a bug. Like, people should not have the right to express any kind of conflicting opinion or they would have to face a struggle session. Do you realize how fucked up that is?
> Who knows what will come of any future project that she is working on.
Are you serious? There are three (three!) studio films in production based on her works. She has two novels in the publication channel right now for release this year. I don't even want to count the number of auxiliary projects like theme parks and derivative products she's currently involved with. And none of this, NONE OF THIS, has changed in the last few weeks since she got in trouble for being a TERF.
In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine being cancelled so hard.
This "cancel culture" paranoia is just out of control. There are excesses, sure. People are mean on the internet everywhere. What you think happening, though, is simply NOT HAPPENING. You're being misled, yet again, by your media who are telling you about "problems" that don't exist that Just So Happen to be "solved" by voting for the right candidates or hating the right people.
Please read the answer I gave to sibling comment. The point is not whether she actually gets to be "canceled" effectively.
The problem with "cancel culture" is more about the culture than the cancelling part. It is the matter of coercing every prominent public figure into some uniform view point that is supposed to be spread around unquestioned.
> hating the right people.
I didn't see any animosity from JK Rowling or Navratilova towards trans-people, yet you are ready to label them TERFs. Who is the one trigger-happy on the hate again?
> There are excesses, sure. People are mean on the internet everywhere.
It's funny how when we see "our side" making something clearly wrong and immoral, we are okay with just calling it "excesses". But if you are so forgiving for mistakes on one side, why not the other?
> I didn't see any animosity from JK Rowling or Navratilova towards trans-people
Just to educate you on the subject, since you don't seem very plugged in: What Rowling did was effectively deny that trans women are "women"[1]. To a demographic that is defined in terms of personal identity, that's offensive on its face. It's "hate", in the simplest form of the word. Compare "Negro facilities are separate but equal", etc...
Now, obviously you don't see it that way, nor does Rowling. But if you want to make pontifications on internet culture you need to understand where the offense comes from.
[1] It's also notable that she was asymmetric about this and did not apply the same logic to trans men. She's part of an identifiable group of women who view the trans issue as a dilution of traditional feminism, which is why the "TERF" label got invented. It's not a label of hate, like "Antifa".
Comparing a demographic that has its identity based on self-affirmation and are claiming for some positive freedoms (I want to play with the women's team) based on their claims with another demographic who had their identity maligned and their natural rights removed by decades of violence and corrupt/biased institutions run by third parties? I am not sure that's the route you want to go.
But honestly, forgive me if I don't respond further. Unlike you, I am writing under my own name and I am weary that anything I say might be misconstrued and lead to some kind of struggle session in the future. Also, I really dislike the drive-by downvoting that is going on now.
> are claiming for some positive freedoms (I want to play with the women's team)
Rowling wasn't arguing about sports teams. That argument is a canard and you know it. Trans folks want to be treated as the people they are, and that's as far as it goes.
And please forgive me for uncontrollable laughter that in a discussion of cancel culture where you clearly are being engaged constructively, you're choosing to disengage anyway... because downvotes. I can't imagine a better illustration of the kind of fake outrage that powers the current conservative freakout. You guys aren't worried about being "canceled", you just don't like being Wrong on the Internet[1].
I will have no qualms to admit being wrong about it. I actually wish to be wrong. It would make things so much simpler.
You are right in one point, you are at least trying to keep a civil conversation. I still don't like the fact that you are hiding under a fake name and I surely don't like that this comment will end up at -2 no matter what I write, but you are engaging constructively so let me give a vote of confidence.
> Rowling wasn't arguing about sports teams
Navratilova was. Her argument was basically "if you grow up as a man and then do a sex change, you will have an unfair advantage over cis women. If more men decide to do that, you will be hurting cis women in sports". It was still construed as "hateful" and "transphobic". Martina Navratilova, gay activist, lost sponsorships and was plainly attacked for simply stating the obvious regarding the physiology of a trans woman [0].
Rowling saying about "there is a word for 'people who menstruate'" is also a call out for that. It is also a way to show that these attempts to declare that "trans women are women" may seem progressive at first but in the end lead to negate the most natural aspects of womanhood.
It seems that progressives don't realize that wishing biology away does not make it reality. Saying "trans women are women" and labeling any one that disagrees or tries to bring any nuance to the argument does not help any cause and quite possibly damages other groups in the process.
> Trans folks want to be treated as the people they are, and that's as far as it goes.
“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
How can anyone interpret this as mistreating or harming trans people is beyond me. Reading this and all the reactions regarding it, to call this transphobic seems way more than just "wanting to be treated as the people they are".
Now, if you tell me that all of this is just a part of cultural wars, that all that is just activists trying to move the Overton window one way or another, I'd agree. If you want to be overly cynical and tell me that this is just corporate America exploiting the facts for clicks and that we are caught in the middle of the shouting, I'd agree even more. But don't tell me that this is just about "trans people wanting to be treated as the people they are", because I don't buy it.
---
[0] I don't know if you know the story of Tiffany Abreu, trans volleyball player who was a professional male player on minor leagues and after a sex surgery went to be the top-record player in the women's league. Another player - Tandara, one of the gold-medalists with Brazil female volleyball team - gave a post-match interview where she says something along the lines of: "As much as we respect the human being, there is no denying that she is favored by growing up as a man. We can see that she holds back in the beginning of the game, but this just means that she can get to the decisive moments with more energy, when she doesn't hold back anymore. She gets to the end of the game with more stamina than anyone, she has higher Vo2 than any other woman, she can jump higher than any other on the league. She has more muscle fibers than we do. She had 30 years as a man to develop a man's body. She will always hit stronger than we do, no matter how much hormone control she is under. Personally we get along just fine, but we know that it's different with her".
Was she "cancelled"? No. Were there other players saying that "she wasn't that different" and supportive of Tiffany? Sure. But in that interview Tandara spoke what was in the mind of most female volleyball players: trans-...
Trans folks appear to want to be treated as the people they claim to be, and want others to participate in their delusion. To further their 'cause' they've attempted to twist the language to coincide with their delusion.
See, this is just sad. You've never known someone trans, have you? Never had a discussion about why people would choose this. Never had to think about things from someone wearing different shoes. It's the same insularity, the same language and the same twisted logic that led people to defend "gay conversion therapy", because homosexuality was a disease. Or segregation, because negro culture was inferior. Or anti-sufferage policies, because women were too emotional to make informed choices. Or slavery.
After all these decades of being Wrong Every Time, I'd really think the bigots would have learned that when a class of people says to you "We want to be people and be treated like people without other people calling us delusional and denying our desires" ... that you'd maybe listen. Just for once.
But no. Every time. Every disadvantaged population with needs becomes a Hill To Die On for the bigot.
Because this new fad of 'trans' isn't a type of gay conversion?
I have met trans people, I have a great deal of sympathy for them. It's apparent they're struggling with some very difficult issues. It's a shame there aren't better treatments available. Treatment options are lacking for a whole host of other mental disorders and psychogenic illness. Treating them like people doesn't require I share their in delusion or 'celebrate' whatever crazy is the zeitgeist.
Women are often too emotional, but if we're going to let hysterical men vote there's not a good argument for not allowing women to vote too.
African American culture is obviously inferior if we're measuring outcomes. Adherents of this particular culture experience poorer outcomes than cultures that are more consistent with the ideals of western civilization.
Before she made her video there were a handful of twitter accounts, each with fewer than 100 followers, asking her to address her previous blackface video.
There were no pile-ons; no one was calling for her to be cancelled; after her video (and indeed before it) people were praising her for her decision to make that video private 5(?) years ago and for her growth since then.
That’s deliberate. I don’t want to identify my friend on this forum. I am disputing the parent’s assertion that “cancel culture” is limited to a few high profile cases. It is far more prevalent than that. The high profile cases are obviously just the ones that most people are aware of.
Then without any more details we'll probably just assume "some offensive jokes" are actually horrible, it's the most common defense by people like that.
"But it was just a joke!"
"No Grandpa, you're just a racist."
You're right though, it is a lot more prevalent than just high profile cases. But I also assume your friend deserved it.
> we'll probably just assume "some offensive jokes" are actually horrible
Don't speak for others.
My personal experience is that women I never had romantic relationships with pretended that I raped them to get influence or money (once as a teen, once as an adult). Talking about this openly 3 friends have told me that similar things have happened to them. But I also won't give you specifics so you'll probably assume that we deserved it.
This subthread is literally a response to someone speaking on behalf of a friend.
And that logic is a little suspect: cancel culture is such a pervasive threat that (1) no one can talk about it happening despite (2) everyone talking about it happening everywhere, pervasively, without evidence.
You're saying his alleged offence was so unique that it would immediately identify him?
Did the firing come before or after actual loss of customers who read his idea of a joke and freely decided (on a "yeah, fuck that guy" basis) that they weren't going to give him their money any more?
I ask that question because public relations is, in fact, part of a CEO's job - and if he was "forced out", that suggests there were other people whose money was tied up in the company, and so he actually had a financial responsibility to read the room better than he evidently did, just from your description.
Part of the responsibility of working a day job in a company is not to shit the desk. I'm hard pressed to call this basic social requirement "cancel culture".
I don't want an internet of bullshit, but that's all we'll ever have, as long as anyone can create 50,0000 sock puppet accounts, and claim to be Pope Francis himself.
The vast majority of the time, I don't need to know your name, but if you're claiming to have knowledge of something, I do need a consistent way to verify your claims via a third party (eg: does a neutral third party vouch that the speaker truly is a certified mechanic? Truly a highschool graduate? Cancer patient? Citizen of Iceland?).
Unless we have some standard for notarization and identification built into the internet, it's turtles all the way down.
I also don't care whether I know your real name, although I'll take you more seriously if you provide it. The main thing I want is the ability to block/mute someone and have it stick. Perhaps everyone should be able to have a secondary/tertiary account, but I also want to be able to easily see that it is not their main account, and perhaps mute everyone not using a primary account.
Reputation is a large part of how civilization remains civilized. There are advantages to not having your reputation follow you around forever -- sometimes people make mistakes and need a fresh start, but there are also advantages in having consequences for bad behavior.
For commercial social platforms though, at least in the short-medium term, allowing anonymity is good because it creates a greater incentive for outrage and conflict, which drives engagement. This is IMO at the root of many current problems in society.
I wonder if you couldn’t have both: a sign in authority that verifies people are people and have not signed up for a site yet, provides tokens, and then other sites can use those tokens to let users create anonymous accounts. The sign in authority would need to have an iron clad privacy policy and some sort of no knowledge guarantee between themselves and other sites. Is this possible?
That's what I've been thinking of as well. Anonymous identities which are linked to your real identity in some way. It could prevent the sock puppet issues without exposing you to privacy issues.
Cancel culture is not really a thing. But I agree there’s lots of good reasons to be anonymous or use a different name. I think we’ve also clearly seen that a Real Names policy hasn’t exactly prevented bad behavior on Facebook
Pretty expensive domain. Wonder if it was bought using ICO fugazi money, since this looks like the content is oddly interested in fringe crypto content.
I feel like there's a need for a privacy-protecting attestation service/protocol. Fully anonymous discussion boards/social networks are tricky because of obvious sockposting-related problems. Another poster mentioned a Voat mechanism for non-username identification, but it sounds like the old *ch concept where some identifiers are hashed s.t. the same poster gets the same ID across some subset of posts (time, topic, etc). That's an ok way of trying to maintain integrity without publicly deanonymizing participants, but is vulnerable to all kinds of technical workarounds. Anecdotally, dealing with ban-evaders in a forum context got a lot harder when CGNAT'd/v6 mobile IPs started getting common.
So, the next step is attesting your identity directly to the site. But, who's going to give some random forum their government-issued ID? Despite SV firms recently trying to normalize that, hopefully fairly few. Facebook can get away with it, but only because they're already Facebook and benefit from the trust implied by scale. Beyond that, what happens when a user says something impolitic and brings down the mob? Trust the mods to not unmask the user? Meh.
If site operators could ask a question like "is this person a real person, do they already have an account with us, do they leave in geographical region X" and a prospective user was able to obtain an attestation that those qualities are true without that attestation revealing any additional information (as well as being cryptographically secure), you could do some interesting things.
The downside is the attestation service then becomes a point of attack for those interested in unmasking individuals. Is it a private company that must answer subpoenas? What if the government wants the proverbial pen register or the organization gets subverted in some other way? Dunno. The ideal is neither side (attestor or service) knows more than it has to - service doesn't know anything about the user besides the handful of agreed-upon facts; the attestor doesn't know anything about the service. Obligatory buzzword: seems like a potential application of zero-knowledge proofs.
And female gamers can be stalked to their home addresses by obsessed people. Anonymity has some advantages for marginalized social groups as it lets them avoid predators better.
edit: Actually I'd assume a lot off harassment of people via other channels would happen including SWATing, emailing employers to get them fired, false reports to get them banned on other sites, contacting spouses with fake evidence of infidelity, etc. Only the victim loses anonymity, the attacker keeps it. Competitive gaming brings out the worst in some people.
I found it while on Twitter, and thought the space was really expanding rapidly. I thought that their KYC integration combined with a kind of micropayment tipping/boosting mechanism was interesting as a way of both surfacing and rewarding quality content in a transparent, verifiable way.
I also posted some recent things about Paras[1], which uses NEAR Protocol[2], both of which I find interesting for the same reasons. Paras allows what seems to me like a self-hosted federated platform with built-in tipping/mining/staking/royalties.
Do you find this interesting too? What are you looking at in this space? I’m a learner and hold no cryptocurrency of any kind, nor do I develop for any crypto. I’m just curious about it, and want to share what I’m seeing if it seems like it will resonate with the audience, in this case HN.
What is it about .. “surfacing and rewarding quality content” (I only write like this at work?) .. that makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning and research it and post about it?
Is there some personal experience that could help us understand your interest? Have you worked as a librarian? Do you believe in blockchain as a way to overcome discrimination? Have you worked as a newspaper editor and feel that decentralized opinions are a solution to problems you encountered? If so, what were those problems, and how did they make you feel?
I can’t tell from your reply if you have any emotions on the topic, or why. You find the topic interesting because of a list of buzzwords, but your reply - while a very well-written set of words - does not contain any emotion with which others can resonate. As a result my initial takeaway is that you’re somehow shilling for coin - profiting somehow from placing this content at HN,
If you aren’t, I apologize! But this is HN, and the coin spam is real, and so if you can bring some life to why you personally are jazzed about this - not just referencing the technologies by keyword but actually explaining why they matter to you using feelings words - then that would go a long way towards establishing some authenticity here.
Of course. I nearly mentioned in my previous disclosure or disclaimer that I have no interest at all in these areas, financially or in any other kind of quid pro quo. I don’t receive any benefit from posting, for any of my posts. I just do it because I genuinely don’t learn or reason well in a vacuum, and I don’t know enough about most of my fields of interest to be an expert; I’m a generalist user in most advanced discussions and cutting edge areas of computing at best, and my interests are usually cursory and self-edifying, if not deep-dives.
I hope my post was not interpreted as shilling. That’s why I also mentioned other topics I’ve posted about in this space, to show my own hand as well as show that I’m not playing favorites. I’m just here to learn from those whose experience and knowledge surpass my own, and whose skills I care to learn myself.
In all honesty, I was having trouble sleeping and was just clicking around on Twitter, found some interesting projects, so I thought, and shared them. There really wasn’t a whole lot of reasoning on my part, beyond my perhaps-mistaken belief that the content was of interest to readers of HN.
I’m open to further discussion on this or any other matter. My only motive is to receive and share info, and if I can help, I want to do so.
HN readers are hypersensitive to coin stuff — far moreso than most topics. Thank you for taking the time to reply, it does lessen the concerns somewhat.
I think that I'm still very wary of this due to their dependence on blockchain and lack of clear profit model. I wish they had a tech landing page that explained why they're interesting (and not just 'woo blockchain') succinctly.
I use my real name, a recent photo (where possible), links to my own domain, and other personally identifiable information on every site that I use, even default anonymous ones like Reddit. I do not have alt accounts. Being able to live this way on the internet is a privilege that I recognize is not available to many people, but for those who can I highly recommend it; it ensures that I always think twice before posting and engage in good faith.
What if you want to express a thought or opinion that is not politically correct though, or might simply be controversial? It by think twice you mean not express it at all, then it sounds like subconscious self-censorship (if such a thing exists).
Just a reminder, politically incorrect != incorrect
This reads like one wanting to keep their accumulated social capital and continue making social capital outlays publicly, and likewise reap the dividends of their own social capital investments, as long as the winds of popular acclaim blow one’s way, while expecting to keep one’s shirt when the winds change. It seems like one not having any skin in the game, or wanting to have it both ways. Talk is cheap. Money talks, bullshit walks. Put your money where your mouth is, or you’re freeloading, lacking the courage of your convictions, or lacking the moral turpitude to proclaim your convictions publicly.
As a counterpoint to myself, I also agree with the link below. There are good reasons for and against using real names. I do not mean to paint with too wide a brush; all free people are and should always be able to decide for themselves whether to use their name or a pseudonym, and readers are usually able to tell why authors do so from context. It gets a bit muddy where social media comes into play, which is why this debate will never be over, and why there is no one right answer. I hope I didn’t come off as someone imposing my choice on others. I simply think there are more downsides than upsides for readers when it comes to pseudonymous authors; however, some texts will never be written under an author’s real name for perfectly legitimate or no reason, and the world would be diminished if those voices were not also heard, and those stories not told.
Here’s what I’m surprised about — nobody has built a moderation focused social network that has tried to poach Reddit’s best moderators by offering to pay them.
With the real names thing, they might have the startling success of Google Plus!
A real names policy is one of those perennial ideas people keep thinking will fix everything - but there's zero evidence for this, and some evidence against it.
The total examples I have:
* In 2007, South Korea required commenters on sites with over 100,000 users to supply their Resident Registration Number (national identity number), and this reduced malicious comments by ... 0.9%. They scrapped it in 2011. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/12/30/2011...
> "While there was an expectation that people would behave better when their activity was tied to their own identity, as that identity is presumably a highly valuable and non-renewable resource to them, the evidence weighed against it: people seem quite willing to be jerks under their own identities."
Voice has put forth this policy that's completely lacking in evidence, presumably because they just felt like it'd work out fine.
And that's before we get to Voice's core audience being the crypto crowd - who have some reluctance to provide full KYC dox to join EOS Twitter.
If anyone ever tries to tell you that a Real Names policy is a good idea - ask them for their numbers on this.
Every site that does "verification" seems to also prohibit anonymity (like this one seems to do). But I don't think that needs to be.
Imagine a site that does ID verification. Add OAuth and now other sites can integrate (similar to login with Google). However, instead of passing name, user ID, and email the verification site can pass an anonymous ID.
With that approach you get 1-to-1 guarantees for human-to-account, preventing sock puppet accounts, users who create new accounts when banned, etc. But, the other sites never know who the user actually is.
Its anonymzing proxy meets OAuth single sign on.
Anyone know existing site that do anything like that?
83 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadhttps://decrypt.co/34598/crypto-social-media-platform-voice-...
Welcome post
https://app.voice.com/post/@salah/join-us-1593835144-1
Help and FAQs
https://help.voice.com/hc/en-us
The tech which makes Voice work
https://eos.io
> Voice uses the inherent characteristics of blockchain technology to promote trusted and transparent social interactions.
Voice requires the use of EOS coins, the creator of which paid a $24 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission over its 2017 ICO.
From https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/icos-magic-beans-and-bu...
"The legal EOS Token Purchase Agreement is a frankly amazing document that everyone should read.[1] US citizens or residents are not to buy the tokens (though EOS assures us they totally don’t constitute a security – hear that, SEC?); the tokens are defined as not being useful in any manner whatsoever; forty-eight hours after the end of the distribution period, the tokens will no longer be transferable; the buyer promises not to purchase them for speculation or investment. If there’s any legal problems caused by you buying these officially worthless things, you agree to indemnify EOS."
[1] PDF: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/references/EOS%20Token%...
Really? While there are excesses everywhere in all things, this it just silly. This is a point made in sympathy to the goals of a political campaign and not out of genuine fear.
People aren't going to stop using their real names for fear of being "cancelled", come on.
The threat of cancel culture is very, very real.
[1] For those old enough to remember "They hate us for our freedoms" and "Radical Islamic Terrorism", this obsession seems like pretty weak sauce, at least as existential threats go. Previous administrations could at least invoke the threat of death. The worst terrors of the modern conservative are apparently being yelled at by hippies on the internet.
She was not just "criticized" for it. You have industry-related websites now claiming to mention her only with hashtag #JKR. She's literally become "the one who shall not be named". Who knows what will come of any future project that she is working on. All of that for the very controversial opinion of "There is a word for 'people who menstruate' that the newspaper could've used"
Also Martina. One of the first openly gay tennis players, an actual defender of women's rights, "canceled" because she dared to say that trans-women would have an unfair advantage and should not be put to play with biologically-born women. The audacity...
The future project is Ickabog, which continues its progress through publishing. Some staff tried saying they no longer wanted to work on anything by JKR, but their employer told them they had no choice and must continue to work on Ickabog or leave the company.
All her books remain in print. All her merch is still being sold.
The multimillionaire JKR has not been cancelled.
> The multimillionaire JKR has not been cancelled.
It is not just who "gets cancelled" and who doesn't. It is about the threat. She is a multimillionaire with enough clout to survive this absurd backlash and to make her own gravity for her work if she needs to. Others aren't. Please let me know of any young and talented YA author that made any kind of "controversial" statement and still stayed around and I might start believing that cancel culture is not such a big threat as you seem to believe.
What a baffling question. I genuinely have no idea what you're getting at.
> It is about the threat.
It feels weird that to talk about cancel culture you pick someone who's at no risk of being cancelled.
I mentioned articles that declared would only mention her by initials to avoid calling her name, you followed that pattern. If it was not deliberate, it was an interesting coincidence.
> It feels weird that to talk about cancel culture you pick someone who's at no risk of being cancelled.
No one can deny the fact that JK Rowling and Martina Navratilova were more than "criticized" for their "opinions". They were misrepresented in their views to create attrition with some minority group, then coerced into getting some kind of apology for saying something that in no way entices animosity towards said minority and still after that get their work and professional relationships harassed to try to get them ostracized.
This by itself is already is cancel culture, not the fact that people actually get canceled.
It feels even weirder that you are trying to minimize the harm caused by cancel culture by pointing out the fact that someone survived it.
> They were misrepresented in their views
Rowling was not misrepresented. She really said those things.
> then coerced into getting some kind of apology
She hasn't apologised. She's made no concessions. She's repeated what she said.
> harm caused by cancel culture by pointing out the fact that someone survived it
No, I'm pointing out that she was never at any risk at all from being cancelled.
You keep talking about how dangerous cancel culture is, and how people keep being attacked. But you're entirely one-sided in your "analysis". You've failed to account for JKR's 14 million followers that she uses to harass people. You never mention the people driven off platforms by the people you're defending. You cherry pick examples to try to get sympathetic victims, but when you do that you're unable to find anyone who actually got cancelled, and you provide examples of people who are at zero risk of cancellation and who keep saying whatever they want.
Unless you can actually point to a specific tweet where she sends her followers to harass someone, can you please drop the emotional rhetoric?
> you're unable to find anyone who actually got cancelled, and you provide examples of people who are at zero risk of cancellation and who keep saying whatever they want.
Oh, you mean survivorship bias? Yes, you are totally right! It is virtually impossible to find an up-and-coming talented writer who is able to express any controversial opinion without fearing for their careers. Why do you think is the more likely explanation: (a) every younger and talented writer shares the same world-view and are completely aligned with the vanguard of social justice or (b) every you writer is aware now that there are "things you can not say", i.e, cancel culture?
You make it sound like them saying "whatever they want" and "face no risk of cancellation" is a bug. Like, people should not have the right to express any kind of conflicting opinion or they would have to face a struggle session. Do you realize how fucked up that is?
Are you serious? There are three (three!) studio films in production based on her works. She has two novels in the publication channel right now for release this year. I don't even want to count the number of auxiliary projects like theme parks and derivative products she's currently involved with. And none of this, NONE OF THIS, has changed in the last few weeks since she got in trouble for being a TERF.
In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine being cancelled so hard.
This "cancel culture" paranoia is just out of control. There are excesses, sure. People are mean on the internet everywhere. What you think happening, though, is simply NOT HAPPENING. You're being misled, yet again, by your media who are telling you about "problems" that don't exist that Just So Happen to be "solved" by voting for the right candidates or hating the right people.
The problem with "cancel culture" is more about the culture than the cancelling part. It is the matter of coercing every prominent public figure into some uniform view point that is supposed to be spread around unquestioned.
> hating the right people.
I didn't see any animosity from JK Rowling or Navratilova towards trans-people, yet you are ready to label them TERFs. Who is the one trigger-happy on the hate again?
> There are excesses, sure. People are mean on the internet everywhere.
It's funny how when we see "our side" making something clearly wrong and immoral, we are okay with just calling it "excesses". But if you are so forgiving for mistakes on one side, why not the other?
Just to educate you on the subject, since you don't seem very plugged in: What Rowling did was effectively deny that trans women are "women"[1]. To a demographic that is defined in terms of personal identity, that's offensive on its face. It's "hate", in the simplest form of the word. Compare "Negro facilities are separate but equal", etc...
Now, obviously you don't see it that way, nor does Rowling. But if you want to make pontifications on internet culture you need to understand where the offense comes from.
[1] It's also notable that she was asymmetric about this and did not apply the same logic to trans men. She's part of an identifiable group of women who view the trans issue as a dilution of traditional feminism, which is why the "TERF" label got invented. It's not a label of hate, like "Antifa".
Comparing a demographic that has its identity based on self-affirmation and are claiming for some positive freedoms (I want to play with the women's team) based on their claims with another demographic who had their identity maligned and their natural rights removed by decades of violence and corrupt/biased institutions run by third parties? I am not sure that's the route you want to go.
But honestly, forgive me if I don't respond further. Unlike you, I am writing under my own name and I am weary that anything I say might be misconstrued and lead to some kind of struggle session in the future. Also, I really dislike the drive-by downvoting that is going on now.
Rowling wasn't arguing about sports teams. That argument is a canard and you know it. Trans folks want to be treated as the people they are, and that's as far as it goes.
And please forgive me for uncontrollable laughter that in a discussion of cancel culture where you clearly are being engaged constructively, you're choosing to disengage anyway... because downvotes. I can't imagine a better illustration of the kind of fake outrage that powers the current conservative freakout. You guys aren't worried about being "canceled", you just don't like being Wrong on the Internet[1].
[1] Yes, that's an xkcd reference.
You are right in one point, you are at least trying to keep a civil conversation. I still don't like the fact that you are hiding under a fake name and I surely don't like that this comment will end up at -2 no matter what I write, but you are engaging constructively so let me give a vote of confidence.
> Rowling wasn't arguing about sports teams
Navratilova was. Her argument was basically "if you grow up as a man and then do a sex change, you will have an unfair advantage over cis women. If more men decide to do that, you will be hurting cis women in sports". It was still construed as "hateful" and "transphobic". Martina Navratilova, gay activist, lost sponsorships and was plainly attacked for simply stating the obvious regarding the physiology of a trans woman [0].
Rowling saying about "there is a word for 'people who menstruate'" is also a call out for that. It is also a way to show that these attempts to declare that "trans women are women" may seem progressive at first but in the end lead to negate the most natural aspects of womanhood.
It seems that progressives don't realize that wishing biology away does not make it reality. Saying "trans women are women" and labeling any one that disagrees or tries to bring any nuance to the argument does not help any cause and quite possibly damages other groups in the process.
> Trans folks want to be treated as the people they are, and that's as far as it goes.
“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
How can anyone interpret this as mistreating or harming trans people is beyond me. Reading this and all the reactions regarding it, to call this transphobic seems way more than just "wanting to be treated as the people they are".
Now, if you tell me that all of this is just a part of cultural wars, that all that is just activists trying to move the Overton window one way or another, I'd agree. If you want to be overly cynical and tell me that this is just corporate America exploiting the facts for clicks and that we are caught in the middle of the shouting, I'd agree even more. But don't tell me that this is just about "trans people wanting to be treated as the people they are", because I don't buy it.
---
[0] I don't know if you know the story of Tiffany Abreu, trans volleyball player who was a professional male player on minor leagues and after a sex surgery went to be the top-record player in the women's league. Another player - Tandara, one of the gold-medalists with Brazil female volleyball team - gave a post-match interview where she says something along the lines of: "As much as we respect the human being, there is no denying that she is favored by growing up as a man. We can see that she holds back in the beginning of the game, but this just means that she can get to the decisive moments with more energy, when she doesn't hold back anymore. She gets to the end of the game with more stamina than anyone, she has higher Vo2 than any other woman, she can jump higher than any other on the league. She has more muscle fibers than we do. She had 30 years as a man to develop a man's body. She will always hit stronger than we do, no matter how much hormone control she is under. Personally we get along just fine, but we know that it's different with her".
Was she "cancelled"? No. Were there other players saying that "she wasn't that different" and supportive of Tiffany? Sure. But in that interview Tandara spoke what was in the mind of most female volleyball players: trans-...
After all these decades of being Wrong Every Time, I'd really think the bigots would have learned that when a class of people says to you "We want to be people and be treated like people without other people calling us delusional and denying our desires" ... that you'd maybe listen. Just for once.
But no. Every time. Every disadvantaged population with needs becomes a Hill To Die On for the bigot.
I have met trans people, I have a great deal of sympathy for them. It's apparent they're struggling with some very difficult issues. It's a shame there aren't better treatments available. Treatment options are lacking for a whole host of other mental disorders and psychogenic illness. Treating them like people doesn't require I share their in delusion or 'celebrate' whatever crazy is the zeitgeist.
Women are often too emotional, but if we're going to let hysterical men vote there's not a good argument for not allowing women to vote too.
African American culture is obviously inferior if we're measuring outcomes. Adherents of this particular culture experience poorer outcomes than cultures that are more consistent with the ideals of western civilization.
Poor woman was practically having a mental breakdown on video.
There were no pile-ons; no one was calling for her to be cancelled; after her video (and indeed before it) people were praising her for her decision to make that video private 5(?) years ago and for her growth since then.
If she was cancelled she cancelled herself.
He was disgraced via Twitter and forced to step down from the firm he created for making some offensive jokes.
"But it was just a joke!" "No Grandpa, you're just a racist."
You're right though, it is a lot more prevalent than just high profile cases. But I also assume your friend deserved it.
Don't speak for others.
My personal experience is that women I never had romantic relationships with pretended that I raped them to get influence or money (once as a teen, once as an adult). Talking about this openly 3 friends have told me that similar things have happened to them. But I also won't give you specifics so you'll probably assume that we deserved it.
This subthread is literally a response to someone speaking on behalf of a friend.
And that logic is a little suspect: cancel culture is such a pervasive threat that (1) no one can talk about it happening despite (2) everyone talking about it happening everywhere, pervasively, without evidence.
That doesn't seem off to you?
Did the firing come before or after actual loss of customers who read his idea of a joke and freely decided (on a "yeah, fuck that guy" basis) that they weren't going to give him their money any more?
I ask that question because public relations is, in fact, part of a CEO's job - and if he was "forced out", that suggests there were other people whose money was tied up in the company, and so he actually had a financial responsibility to read the room better than he evidently did, just from your description.
Part of the responsibility of working a day job in a company is not to shit the desk. I'm hard pressed to call this basic social requirement "cancel culture".
Then it exists.
The vast majority of the time, I don't need to know your name, but if you're claiming to have knowledge of something, I do need a consistent way to verify your claims via a third party (eg: does a neutral third party vouch that the speaker truly is a certified mechanic? Truly a highschool graduate? Cancer patient? Citizen of Iceland?).
Unless we have some standard for notarization and identification built into the internet, it's turtles all the way down.
Reputation is a large part of how civilization remains civilized. There are advantages to not having your reputation follow you around forever -- sometimes people make mistakes and need a fresh start, but there are also advantages in having consequences for bad behavior.
For commercial social platforms though, at least in the short-medium term, allowing anonymity is good because it creates a greater incentive for outrage and conflict, which drives engagement. This is IMO at the root of many current problems in society.
But in principle it sounds like it may work though I’d like to see an enforceable TOS that doesn’t undermine the purpose.
https://coinjazeera.news/dan-larimer-receives-guinness-world...
- Toxic people can finally be identified and penalized - Better matchmaking (less "smurfing", less streamer accounts going from zero to hero)
I haven't looked too closely at Voice's setup, but does "verified" always have to mean non-private, and non-anonymous?
So, the next step is attesting your identity directly to the site. But, who's going to give some random forum their government-issued ID? Despite SV firms recently trying to normalize that, hopefully fairly few. Facebook can get away with it, but only because they're already Facebook and benefit from the trust implied by scale. Beyond that, what happens when a user says something impolitic and brings down the mob? Trust the mods to not unmask the user? Meh.
If site operators could ask a question like "is this person a real person, do they already have an account with us, do they leave in geographical region X" and a prospective user was able to obtain an attestation that those qualities are true without that attestation revealing any additional information (as well as being cryptographically secure), you could do some interesting things.
The downside is the attestation service then becomes a point of attack for those interested in unmasking individuals. Is it a private company that must answer subpoenas? What if the government wants the proverbial pen register or the organization gets subverted in some other way? Dunno. The ideal is neither side (attestor or service) knows more than it has to - service doesn't know anything about the user besides the handful of agreed-upon facts; the attestor doesn't know anything about the service. Obligatory buzzword: seems like a potential application of zero-knowledge proofs.
edit: Actually I'd assume a lot off harassment of people via other channels would happen including SWATing, emailing employers to get them fired, false reports to get them banned on other sites, contacting spouses with fake evidence of infidelity, etc. Only the victim loses anonymity, the attacker keeps it. Competitive gaming brings out the worst in some people.
Slavery abolitionists, american revolutionaries, all very toxic people that needed to be penalized according to popular opinion.
Access denied
What happened?
This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
@aspenmayer, what is interesting about this social network to you?
I also posted some recent things about Paras[1], which uses NEAR Protocol[2], both of which I find interesting for the same reasons. Paras allows what seems to me like a self-hosted federated platform with built-in tipping/mining/staking/royalties.
Do you find this interesting too? What are you looking at in this space? I’m a learner and hold no cryptocurrency of any kind, nor do I develop for any crypto. I’m just curious about it, and want to share what I’m seeing if it seems like it will resonate with the audience, in this case HN.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737526
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737560
Is there some personal experience that could help us understand your interest? Have you worked as a librarian? Do you believe in blockchain as a way to overcome discrimination? Have you worked as a newspaper editor and feel that decentralized opinions are a solution to problems you encountered? If so, what were those problems, and how did they make you feel?
I can’t tell from your reply if you have any emotions on the topic, or why. You find the topic interesting because of a list of buzzwords, but your reply - while a very well-written set of words - does not contain any emotion with which others can resonate. As a result my initial takeaway is that you’re somehow shilling for coin - profiting somehow from placing this content at HN,
If you aren’t, I apologize! But this is HN, and the coin spam is real, and so if you can bring some life to why you personally are jazzed about this - not just referencing the technologies by keyword but actually explaining why they matter to you using feelings words - then that would go a long way towards establishing some authenticity here.
I hope my post was not interpreted as shilling. That’s why I also mentioned other topics I’ve posted about in this space, to show my own hand as well as show that I’m not playing favorites. I’m just here to learn from those whose experience and knowledge surpass my own, and whose skills I care to learn myself.
In all honesty, I was having trouble sleeping and was just clicking around on Twitter, found some interesting projects, so I thought, and shared them. There really wasn’t a whole lot of reasoning on my part, beyond my perhaps-mistaken belief that the content was of interest to readers of HN.
I’m open to further discussion on this or any other matter. My only motive is to receive and share info, and if I can help, I want to do so.
I think that I'm still very wary of this due to their dependence on blockchain and lack of clear profit model. I wish they had a tech landing page that explained why they're interesting (and not just 'woo blockchain') succinctly.
- KYC based account registration. Legally verified names.
- Blockchain powered (de-centralisation). Censorship resistant. Many interfaces to this website.
- Earn money. Users get paid for content directly. More likes, views translate to payment.
Early stages of voice.com but the ideas have potential in a hard to crack market.
Is this funded on an advertising model? Otherwise where does the money to pay users come from?
Just a reminder, politically incorrect != incorrect
https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Re...
A real names policy is one of those perennial ideas people keep thinking will fix everything - but there's zero evidence for this, and some evidence against it.
The total examples I have:
* In 2007, South Korea required commenters on sites with over 100,000 users to supply their Resident Registration Number (national identity number), and this reduced malicious comments by ... 0.9%. They scrapped it in 2011. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/12/30/2011...
* UK, 2007: a study of students showed they were worse, not better. "There was four times as much flaming when they knew each other than when they didn't." https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/12/guardianw...
* In a now-unavailable post to Google+ by Yonatan Zunger, one of the people whose problem Google+ was, he said: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq
> "While there was an expectation that people would behave better when their activity was tied to their own identity, as that identity is presumably a highly valuable and non-renewable resource to them, the evidence weighed against it: people seem quite willing to be jerks under their own identities."
Voice has put forth this policy that's completely lacking in evidence, presumably because they just felt like it'd work out fine.
And that's before we get to Voice's core audience being the crypto crowd - who have some reluctance to provide full KYC dox to join EOS Twitter.
If anyone ever tries to tell you that a Real Names policy is a good idea - ask them for their numbers on this.
Also, did you know Voice paid $30m for the name voice.com? A historical record amount - even sex.com only went for $13m. https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/20/yes-voice-com-is-the-m...
Imagine a site that does ID verification. Add OAuth and now other sites can integrate (similar to login with Google). However, instead of passing name, user ID, and email the verification site can pass an anonymous ID.
With that approach you get 1-to-1 guarantees for human-to-account, preventing sock puppet accounts, users who create new accounts when banned, etc. But, the other sites never know who the user actually is.
Its anonymzing proxy meets OAuth single sign on.
Anyone know existing site that do anything like that?