BIG Things! @ned at Consensus 2018 - The Legality of Content Takedowns (GDPR) & SMT Communities That Don't Use Stake Weighted Voting!

in #cryptocurrency6 years ago (edited)

I have just watched the video of @ned speaking at the conensus 2018 conference that was uploaded by @acidyo to youtube. Thanks! I just have a couple of comments.

Firstly, I like that Ned has a calmness to his presentation now that feels to be backed by experience and passion for the industry - it is noticeably missing from the majority of 'crypto people' as so many of them really seem to be just trying to jump on the bandwagon and lack the essential expertise needed to deliver value into discussion.

Overall the conversation went well and was informative - though I do feel that there a couple of highly significant issues that are not being addressed here - so I will address them ;)

Content Takedown


The interviewer asked about the problems, both real and potential, with regards the need for content to be removed from social sites for various reasons - including legal requirements. Ned addressed this by stating that Steemit does remove content from public site when requested to, just like Youtube and other sites. He was attempting to mention that the Steem blockchain is still uncensored though - which is STILL an issue, since those who facilitate the Steem network may find themselves liable if they are literally unable to remove content when legally requested. I think this may actually mean that it is the witnesses who are liable and not Steemit Inc. - Which is a pretty major issue that needs to be openly addressed.

I wrote about this issue in a post about the new EU legislation for privacy and data management called the GDPR. At that time, the conclusion among the only witnesses that commented was that 'we'll deal with it when we have to' and that everyone would have to come together to fight the case! This is not really the answer that I want to be hearing here. I want to be hearing that Steemit Inc. has a legal team that are looking at this seriously and are ready to release a statement and policy on this that witnesses can reference and consider as they evaluate whether or not to continue being witnesses.

As you can read in this fairly detailed blog for developers on the topic of implementing features that ensure websites meet the requirements of the GDPR, there are numerous requirements that social sites need to respect and support in order to maintain the rights of their users. This applies to any software system in the world that holds the data of members of the EU.

So with this in mind, I am pretty sure that it is a legal requirement for Steemit.com to include the kinds of features that Google and other sites are regularly sending out updates about, which allow us to remove our data, view our data and enforce other legal rights. Google and other large corporations/banks have been furiously working on this for over a year to ensure compliance since the potential fines for non compliance are very high indeed.

So far we have not heard a peep from Steemit Inc. about this as far as I am aware.

Could it be possible that the uncensored nature of the Steem blockchain becomes it's downfall due to the EU 'protecting' us from our own selves! :/

'One User, One Vote'


After the question was asked about whale domination of Steemit, Ned agreed it is an issue and brought up the topic of ways to run communities where the Steem Power weighting system no longer applies.. He described this as 'one user, one vote' - which I take to mean that all votes will be equal and so users with no Steem Power will be able to effect the rewarding of posts to the same extent that whales can. This would be a massive and powerful shift for Steem if it were successful. Ned stated that this is part of what SMTs make possible and did not state that this change would be made to the main Steem 'arena' (Non SMT).

While this sounds like it is a possible way to increase the accuracy and fairness of measuring the 'proof of brain' idea , which Steem was originally designed around - whereby the subjective value of a post determines it's reward level - in truth I can see an obvious flaw in this. Currently it is possible to buy user accounts on Steem, so if whales have their power taken away they may then choose to use some of their money to buy lots of accounts from which to vote from and use automated tools to mass vote the posts they support, effectively continuing the problem of 'Proof of wallet' - whereby the richest have the most power. Careful assessment will need to be made to implement such a change in the way voting effects rewards on Steem, since we may just see the problem change form, with no real benefit and a lot of wasted time.

The video


Comments?


What do you think? Does anyone have any useful input on the legality issue for Witnesses and Steemit Inc.?
Anyone an expert on the complex world of GDPR?
Let us know in the comments below!

Wishing you well,

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My understanding of the 'one vote, one account' would be that everyones vote still has the same value as now but the algorithm for trending etc would work based on how many votes a post gets rather the the monetary value of a post...

I see, ok - that's a possibility. I might try making that algorithm on Steem Ocean to see how it looks.

I could be wayyyy off but who knows. I just think changing the rewards completly will make alot of people very unhappy!

He was only talking about this change in relation to SMT communities, not to Steem as a whole, AFAIK.

Theres more to it than that, and the more to it was questioned with insufficiently capable answers in my opinion.

One person, one vote, in communities, id verified wave of hands, somehow and stake weighted, but then vetted by select community moderators with something like a bias adjustment they can edict.

I caught it very fast, and there is waving of hands over corrupted moderators... see the moment when he steps towards the whiteboard, touches on this, and pause it and look at the white board again...

I don't recall a whiteboard in this video - which one are you referring to?

The live stream yesterday

Oh you have the new york video, Im talking about the japan meetup - both were out yesterday, i saw them both in 5 min grabs of my attn, sorry, and no, i dont have a lnk, not even sure where I got put on it from or by who anymore, but i haven't slept since wednesday or so

Overall I think Ned came across well and the discussion went well, Steem is not hypothetical, it has some serious real world use behind it. The other apps in the space are still untested to a large extent and their architects are constantly talking in the hypothetical.

I am not sure where the logic for one account one vote being a solution to the whale problem came from. Maybe in the world of SMTs the issuer of the SMT will keep track of who are joining their community and discourage bots but who knows?

America seems to be taking little notice of the GDPR in general, avoiding it where possible. Maybe they have bigger problems (anti money laundering, SEC etc)
From Neds point of view Steemit is an app, and he will comply with regulations from that position. Lets face it GDPR is a hot potato that nobody wants to get involved with it unless they have to.
Because the Blockchain is not something Steemit Inc can control I think they will be unlikely to attempt to provide legal advise or be much help either.
The lead on this with respect to the blockchain will have to come from the Witnesses.

I don't think anyone knows at this stage how the GDPR will play out and be enforced in many areas, but especially with respect to Blockchains. Last Sunday I heard a legal expert on a radios show outlining some of the key points for businesses in Ireland. The regulators are going to be so overburdened at the beginning they will likely start with the big fish and work their way down. The key at the moment is, if your not fully compliant, to start the process and get some solid legal advise. I may be worth for a few European witnesses to get together and get some professional legal advice on this issue.

My understanding is that if each account has the same vote power as every other account, there can be no bid bots in the usual way. They would have to own a huge number of accounts and then the bots would just be ones that create a kind of swarm effect using many accounts that actually already exist I think.

I have attempted to motivate the witnesses into the direction you described here but got basically nowhere.

Vote equality leads to the kind of astroturfing methods you see on literally every other social media site where it only takes an organization a couple of upvotes to get the ball rolling on posts, it is not always a guarantee but it gives it the momentum to have a chance at landing on the front page. You just post up a post or two a day or vote on things that mention your product and eventually something goes viral. It is usually too obvious when something is voted by a massive amount of bot votes because the actual activity in the thread is too sparse compared to the voted numbers, and if people don't like the copy-pasta your paid workers are putting in the thread as responses then that also damages your brand.

Wait, what were we talking about?

Oh yeah, no sane company would spend money on steemit when they have an end-product or service to sell and could reach 1000x the amount of eyeballs for cheaper.

America seems to be taking little notice of the GDPR in general, avoiding it where possible.

I am a co-founder and executive VP of Tech for an international SaaS product company. I can assure you America is taking it very very seriously, and watch your inbox for emails from every site you ever put an email in, flooding in, as they already are from every brand name ever, about their new GDPR policies or more sedately "Privacy Policy" updates...

It's no joke, and no one is laughing it away.

In my experience, the majority of software supply corporations I have spoken with recently in the USA region (not to be confused with the URA region ;) ) had not done much about GDPR until I prompted them (this was around 2 months ago when I was talking to several here). There are definitely groups who are ready and definitely groups who aren't - much the same as in Britain.

We have very different experiences then, but I deal in fortune 500s and federal contractors and name brand companies in my SaaS business... also, judging by my inbox, as I said, every company I ever gave an email to is hitting me with gdpr and privacy policy announcements, and I'm firmly in the USA here, 90 miles from washington dc. :)

Sure ok, I was dealing with less well known suppliers in this case.

Well I mean, yeah, I haven't gone back to my neglected websites from years ago, and updated wordpress with a delete plugin or anything lol but "real" companies? I'm not seeing them ignore this...

In this case I am referring to multi million dollar companies in the field of telemedicine.

Wouldn't they have already been prepared for this under HIPAA?

Thanks for sharing and great summary of the talking points! It would seem difficult to hold witnesses liable as they may be private accounts? (maybe I am missing some type of witness verification process)

Either way, I would think that it should ultimately fall with Steemit, Inc, if for no other reason than it is incorporated and individuals would not have to bear the burden. That amount of personal risk would be a significant disincentive for people to become witnesses.

There is no requirement for witnesses to register their legal identity anywhere - however, if the governments decided they wanted to trace the operators of witness servers, they would probably not find it too difficult, considering they have full access to the traffic behind the scenes.

The situation of hosting the blockchain seems very simular to running a usenet node. It was my understanding when Sys Admining in the early '90's that protection was found in Common Carrier laws.

Among the powers granted to the FCC was the ability to classify a communication organization as a “common carrier” under Title II of the act.

My friend who ran that portal explained it as this:

The carrier must provide its service in a way that is agnostic to the goods being transported. Because being impartial often means not looking into the package, common carriers are typically given an exemption for shuttling illegal goods; if a package was found to contain illegal contents, the sender or receiver (and not the carrier) would be held liable under a common carrier exemption.

Like UPS. You have t be carefu never to gt involved in what things folks have you transport because as soon as you comment to one fok about not liking their stuff you suddenly are responsible for everyones stuff. You have to be hnds off or not. If hands on yeah you are respnsible for everything, if hands off you are like hey I just carry kilos of mass, none of my business whats in it

This is not meant as legal advice yet saw stuff going through that usenet feed that would be illigal if found on one's private computer, in my un-legally trained opinion. 😎

It was cool to see that STINC is preparing block blacklists that could be easily distributed should witnesses desire the same level of censorship as STINC.

My understanding is that the moment the carrier becomes aware that they are 'carrying' 'illegal' things, they become obliged to take action to change the situation. This is part of why some sites take the position that they simply won't look at their content. However, as soon as content is flagged in one way or another, it becomes the carrier's responsibility.

In our case, to get something removed from 400+ witness nodes, begins by filtering at the rpcs for further inputs, but then would require a chain fork to re-ledger the chain if data was removed from validated blocks. But private registration information better not be in the chain, only public information, so I'm not entirely sure what the issue is. If you issue a take down of your private info on a blockchain, it means erasing the keys on your OWN computer or not putting stuff in a post or comment or wallet memo, you dont want public in the first place.

But private registration information better not be in the chain, only public information, so I'm not entirely sure what the issue is. If you issue a take down of your private info on a blockchain, it means erasing the keys on your OWN computer or not putting stuff in a post or comment or wallet memo, you dont want public in the first place.

I'm not really sure what you are saying here. The GDRP states that if a data controller or processor stores data about an identifiable natural person on their system, then that person has the right to edit or remove it. That cannot be done on an uneditable blockchain, for starters.

Precisely, but, a block chain is a public record of transactions. Not a private store of user information.

If you are right, then the first thing I'm going to do is send a nasty letter to the us government to force them to remove my public information from all their records, starting with the IRS, the justice department and all the state police departments and sheriffs departments that have ever collected a thing about me. Poof, screw you America, Europe said I could disappear! :)

You aren't a European citizen ;)
Besides which, there are exclusions in the GDRP for 'law enforcement' and related systems.
But I am right and you should send the letter asap! :)

I'm not, but my daughter has dual citizenship with the UK, does that buy her a ticket?

I will speak to the German Queen of England and see what she says.. I'll call the butler immediately.. one moment.

BY the way - I've spent some time on this myself, since our system is being made GDPR compliant under my direction as VP of Tech, it falls on me and my department to ensure readiness. We have to be able to eliminate any data about you, in runtime or archives such as backups, even offline filing cabinets.

But on the blockchain, this is more like saying the new york times has to seek out and burn every piece of paper they ever printed, including those in your house and every subscriber or purchasers house.

Yeah. No. The block chain is effectively a data store of personal information like the newspaper is.

In my non-expert opinion I believe the witnesses would ultimately be responsible for any content legally required to be taken down. We may come to a point where witness servers in certain areas of the world may need to shut down. That is unless some mechanism is added to remove illegal content. It also becomes more complicated if the material is stored as IPFS.

Technically, the EU legislation applies everywhere if the users are based in the EU - so if this is truly a problem, it is possible that EU courts/nations might move to block the domains of all apps that use Steem, as they have done with bit torrent tracker sites.

Voting - Changing to one user/vote can change things, but greed will find way to bypass new rules. One of ways you mentioned.

It's all curing the symptoms and not the cause. But the cause is not in changing the rules, it's about doing what is right thing to do in certain occasion.

Is it me or it seem there are some positive trends starting to change Steemit?

I agree that there seem to be more positive trends than even a few months ago when I joined. Always glad to see some optimism on here!

Yes, technology can never solve heartlessness. At least by having SMTs providing space for experiments of this kind, we can learn what works best for us.

Yes, it's better little change then no change at all. Maybe this change is reflection little more heart ;)

Could it be possible that the uncensored nature of the Steem blockchain becomes it's downfall due to the EU 'protecting' us from our own selves! :/

No. The downfall of steemit will be censorship and copyright laws, built for the current centralised structure. What is the point of havIng a decentralised platform, if we are advocating for working under centralised rules? Why do the majority of people seem to have stockholm syndrome when it comes to this issue. Copyright does not protect us, it protects the lawmakers and their exclusive clubs. All it does is limit freedom and creativity by those who want to enforce rules on everyone else.


I completely agree with you on the one user, one vote issue. There will always be a way around it, no matter what rules you implement. Whether you own multiple accounts or not. All the big players will still own the reward pool, via the power they can redistribute in new and varied forms. They still get to keep their current advantage in the long run, because they can 'afford it'. There will also be the case of even more gangs roaming around constantly voting on each others posts, regardless of 'quality'. This already happens In mass now, and will become even more prevalent as time goes on. A lot of screaming about big hitting reward pool rapers, while there is no real discussion about the gang vote rapers, created by some discord clubs. It's like we are back at school, either hanging with the 'cool kids', or left to fend for yourself because you're not cool enough or don't want to suck dick for votes. Exclusive clubs for votes. I thought people didn't like elitist tendencies? Oh the hypocrisy of some!

That's my little rant, now I'm off 😂

Regarding copyright, whether we like it or not, the fact remains that as long as the prevailing power hierarchies and governments exist, they will move to shut down those who ignore their rules. This is why Steemit inc. conforms to them. If the world in general decides that they prefer true freedom, then we will see change in that regard.

That is true.. thanks for the reply

I really admire Ned, and I like how he articulately provided reasonable answers to the questions. From what he said, it seems STEEM promises to be much bigger and better, which is a good thing.

@ned has many idea for go forwarding steemit... Consensus is another well idea for steemit... It must need for a community... Go steemit go ...!!

important thing you shared.. many people wil helped by this post.. thanks.

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