[Nursie]

As far as I'm aware, the first amendment doesn't protect the distribution of child abuse images, or allow harassment, etc.

So we already have lines on 'speech'.

I agree, censorship can be sinister, but I disagree that it's so sinister that we have to allow everything for fear of allowing nothing. Society already doesn't work that way.

[feanaro]

> As far as I'm aware, the first amendment doesn't protect the distribution of child abuse images, or allow harassment, etc.

Yes, but those are already illegal. That does not (or at the very least should not) mean politicians get to dictate what kind of technology is allowed. You cannot outlaw a technology (or require a backdoor) simply because it may not support deletion as a feature by virtue of being decentralized.

[Nursie]

I'm not sure I'm arguing for a ban on decentralised tech as a whole, to go back to my first post on the topic - far from being a selling point, decentralisation is a negative feature for a lot of people. Centralisation provides points of control that are useful way beyond political suppression of speech, to allow (for instance) transaction reversal and material take down.

The post I replied to was singing the praises of decentralisation, as if the idea that nobody can control what's said and done is a universal positive. I'm just putting across the counterpoint that it's not, there are circumstances where unilateral control could be (and is, by large sections of the population) seen as a good thing.

> You cannot outlaw a technology (or require a backdoor) simply because it may not support deletion as a feature by virtue of being decentralized.

I mean, you can. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good thing to do, but there's no real reason a government couldn't make exactly such a rule. Whether it could be enforceable in any way is a different matter.

[feanaro]

Of course decentralized architectures are not without downsides, just like any engineering trade-off. I'm not so sure it is a strictly negative feature for a lot of people though -- they may just consider it an overall negative due to some conveniences they may have lost as part of the trade-off.

And that's okay. It's important to bear in mind the things lost by not being decentralized also, though. I think this is presently not very prominent since a lot people started using the internet for a few large centralized services so they are not very familiar with the idea. Arguably, there was a period when people flocked to the internet because of the newfound decentralization.

> I'm just putting across the counterpoint that it's not, there are circumstances where unilateral control could be (and is, by large sections of the population) seen as a good thing.

It's seen as a good thing as long as the single point of control is doing things which are (mostly) aligned with the desires of these large sections of the population. This is a tautology. History teaches us that this is not at all given, though, so it's important not to rely on it strongly.

> I mean, you can. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good thing to do, but there's no real reason a government couldn't make exactly such a rule. Whether it could be enforceable in any way is a different matter.

Well, certainly. You can declare anything at all. I was proclaiming that from a position of practicality.