Parler a very controversial US right wing site has been kicked out from AWS, it could be a very profitable customer for Storj, what is the policies of Storj about hosting this kind of sites?
Even though I’m not thrilled at the idea of hosting such a service it sounds like the decentralized nature of tardigrade could help them in some aspects.
However I think that it wouldn’t be possible for them to run all their “stuff” on tardigrade, it would only be for storage.
Foreigner here…
What… was this site about exactly? I can’t really figure it out from their minimalist page currently just saying they will be back and that no-one can stop free speech… About what?
Is the site parler.com?
Heyo!
For context for non-US folks, Parler was an alternative social network that did not do a sufficient job in moderating posts that called for violent overthrow of our democratic government, and as a result, became kind of overrun with seditionist fascists and white supremacists. It’s good AWS kicked them off their platform. Good riddance to them.
If Parler tries to make an account with any of our hosted Satellites, we’ll kick them off, too. It’s true that other people can run Satellites, and we have no control over those Satellites. In that scenario, it would be up to storage node operators to kick them off. Storage node operators are able to control which Satellites they’ll do business with.
I’d like to point you to this wonderful thread by Paul Frazee about the responsibility creators of decentralized technology have: https://twitter.com/pfrazee/status/1348415859707023362. Ultimately, decentralization is an enabler because it democratizes control of technology, but it won’t succeed if it lets the worst excesses of the paradox of tolerance run unchecked. It’s important we sort out decentralized moderation, so together we can all work to make the internet a place we want to be, instead of leaving it up to the Jeff Bezoses of the world.
-JT, CTO
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Storj and Tardigrade is an end to end encrypted storage solution. It likely to store all kind of files about pedophilia, drug dealers, terrorists plan, etc…
Is Storj above the 1st amendment about freedom of speech like Jeff Bezoses. Freedom of speech mean you allow someone with different ideas to express itself, now many of them will have conspiracy theory, NWH, or whatever, its the basic work of any media follower to check the data for himself, if he doesn’t you might thing he is stupid but he has a voting ballot in his hand, try to convince him to your ideas. Censoring ideas lead to USSR fall. Freedom of speech its the base our of democracy if you censure it, you turn into dictatorship where the opposition is forbidden. It works great for Putin, is it what we want?
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As far as I know, Parler was not convicted of any crime (by an actual court of law or even a government agency), so, is its content illegal?
And yeah, it does seem a little strance that the service that advertises itself as being encrypted and even has a warrant canary is now essentially censoring content by itself. I understand if Parler is illegal content in the jurisdiction that Storj operates or it got a take down order from a government agency, but if it’s legal…
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Yes Jeff Bezoses is well above any court of law.
But still the question is Storj/Tardigrade having such an editorial policy?
In either way its problematic to have SNO’s conveying such data and we don’t have any means to support or stop it.
It’s, IMO, a good thing. If you, as a SNO was able to see what content you store and who you store it for, then (ignoring privacy concerns and such) the government may well expect you to actually go through the terabytes of data that is on your node and check if it all complies with the local law. Would you be able to do that? I would’t.
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I spaced talking about end-to-end encryption here. We do have end to end encryption, and we obviously can’t scan for files, or moderate content we don’t know about or can’t access.
That said, we have significant public sharing functionality (see https://link.tardigradeshare.io/s/jvgmjntaucpfedohxn3ogdrsfcfa/homepage/TardigradeExplainerVideo.m4v for an example). If we discover that someone is using our service to distribute illegal material, yes, we have a responsibility to take that content down. We mathematically cannot scan your data for illegal material, but if you share the decryption keys (which is what is happening with the above link), then as Satellite operators we are responsible for responding to DMCA requests, complying with authorities, and moderating content. You may prefer a different Satellite operator, though storage node operators may also prefer a different Satellite operator as well.
As a storage node operator, you should be interested in the content and moderation policies of Satellites you configure your storage node to work with. Again, content and moderation policies only apply to sharing and hosting, but it’s still worth considering.
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Would you pro-actively remove content that may not be illegal?
Removing content because of a DMCA request or because the government said so is one thing, you do not really have a choice there.
However, what about content that, currently, did not result in an official takedown notice according to the law, just a bunch of regular people complaining about it? For the sake of the argument, let’s assume it is not immediately obvious that the content is violating the law.
Would you take it down or would you wait for the government to officially tell you to take it down?
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I think a proper, well documented policy would be in order here, not just a a few forum posts. This seems to be a hot topic at the moment (not on the forum, but in general).
I think it is also crucial that StorJ think clearly through this, censoring content that is not deemed illegal could open us to other types of legal threats (When we use our own system instead of the legal system to ascertain what should and should not be removed, it opens us up to lawsuits related to discrimination or whatever else for how such selections are made).
imho should be a very clear policy stated somewhere in legal terms.
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Generally I don’t have to get into business with everyone, I can choosemy clients. But at what point is it censorship or discrimination if I don’t go into business with someone or cancel the relationship?
I think you forgot one important option: If authorities request you to submit the IPs of all nodes hosting the content in question, you would comply, right?
So with the IPs you then have provided, authorities could go after ever single SNO who provided a piece of an illegal file. Correct?
And this
is an illusion. As a single SNO you have no idea what customers a satellite may accept or not and therefor may result in illegal content being shared or not. You just have to look at the customers that are on the Storj Labs satellites. From Filezilla to Filebase and whatever. There is no way for an SNO to assess what such a customer will bring or not. So it is really completely illusionary to lay off a responsibility for illegal content on the single SNO.
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That won’t happen. They go the service provider which is Storjlabs. SNO’s are just the hard drives. SNO’s can’t chose which data to accept, they don’t know which data they receive. Also, a fraction of something illegal might not be illegal, since by itself, even if it wasn’t encrypted, you can’t identify it as illegal.
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They should be allowed to it is the right to free speech. Moderating or the lack thereof looks like a crap argument. Not to mention that holding every site with user-posted content liable for every idiot on the internet we might as well shut down the internet.
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Note that in the US, the right to free speech means that you’re protected from censorship from the government. Private corporations are free to choose who they do business with.
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While I have no problem with Mr Beezos and I enjoy his online store frequently. I do see a big problem with virtue signalling left or right BS in large tech company’s. And you can see it leads to civil unrest like rioting peasant storming the Capitol. No debate no ding ding dong.
Free speech and planning to storm the capitol are two different things. One need moderation the other one not, but without moderation no one knows which one is which.
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So your telling me they were openly debating storming the Capitool and the fake Intel Community and No-Law Enforcement didn’t see that one coming? All this while DT was throwing a temper tantrum on TV… What are these people getting paid for again?
These kind of things are police matters. Moderation should be the police if it violates any laws.
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Like you said. They are police matters if they violate any laws. To know about that they have to be informed by someone, which are moderators on any platform.