I'm continually bothered by those who stand in rejection of change. I mean, I do try to be empathetic to their frustrations, open to the criticisms even, but when misinformed voices attempt to "set the record straight", I can't help but to default to sarcasm, knowing how unproductive it is.

But ok, I'll try this again, let's see if I can dim my own bias enough to be fair to the voices of resistance.

The Censorship Conundrum

This is not debatable anymore, and I would probably not waste my time with someone defending or denying it happens. This is to say that, all mainstream social media is subject to censorship without exception. Yes, we can talk about liabilities, hate speech, etc, but the facts are very plain for everyone to see.

What I find most curious about this is that a portion of the population believes, naively so, that what we need is for government to intervene, simply replacing one censoring agent for another. All we have to do is to observe how more authoritarian regimes are "regulating" the internet to see this dynamic in full display. So, to believe this is the solution is to kick the can further down the road.

Unfiltered

Seems somewhat naive to me that we can enforce something equivalent to a thought prevention police. In other words, that through legislation we can fine tune a system that would filter the bad entirely without touching the good.

The main problem with this train of thought is that "good" and "bad" is in most cases subjective, with only abominations and blatant human rights violations being the only situations that the vast majority can agree on. For example: Someone sharing bigoted views on sexuality is only wrong to more liberal thinkers, but is expressing truth to fundamentalist conservatives. Within their social environments, and depending on who you ask, they are both right and both wrong.

Retaking control

Is no doubt the goal, and it's not entirely defined by financial components. Yes, when we talk about blockchain, we often talk about financial opportunity and that's all well and good. But the most powerful feature of a distributed ledger is it's ability to survive the crippling effects of censorship.

So yes, they can resist, just like those who loved their fax machines and repudiated the inconveniences of email, but we all know how that story turned out.

It seems I have failed at my task of remaining objective. But what can I do? I'm only human after all.

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