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Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

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Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#71

Post by contingencies »

matt4077 wrote: post #5

Fun to see how bitcoin has come full circle in reinventing everything its cheerleaders initially railed against: fraud, then centralization, regulation, and now “censorship”. I guess the lesson here should be about the primacy of law, and how you won’t succeed in using technology to undermine it.

Don't be so defeatist. You can realistically sidestep law a few ways, eg.

(1) by being fervently multi-jurisdiction

(2) by being transparent and high-profile and community-popular enough ("think of the children!") to resist attempts at regulation

(3) by throwing the dog a bone (ie. making it profitable for a jurisdiction not to legislate against you or interfere)

(4) by being nominally jurisdictionless (ie. darknet only)

Morally and progressively speaking, I suppose the last is the superior option. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow banking integration, so speed of settlement, scaling and trust become challenges. Hacker quest: solve them and win big money.

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#72

Post by IncRnd »

roywiggins wrote: post #68
IncRnd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must hang with a different crowd that doesn't add a specific # of parentheses to send dog-whistle messages. You should ask yourself, was the tweet wrong? Did the people who it referenced all have their names surrounded by ((( and )))? That would in fact be bizarre.

The echoes meme comes from a neonazi podcast who would play an echo sound effect behind every single mention of a Jewish sounding name. When people on Twitter put the (()) around their own names, they are intentionally marking themselves as Jewish so as to raise a middle finger to the neonazis who started the meme. So if someone references "people with (()) around their name", they're talking about Jews. That's who p…

Thank you!

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#73

Post by IncRnd »

roywiggins wrote: post #70
IncRnd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you recall what precipitated the invasion of Iraq?

There was no report signed off by the CIA, DNI, and DHS that concluded with high confidence that the Iraq government had WMDs. The WMD intelligence, such as it was, came from raw reports pulled directly from the lower levels of the CIA bypassing the ordinary processes. The report on Russian hacking pulled from conclusions drawn by the entire US intelligence community. Also, did you read the Mueller indictment of a do…

I wasn't saying, "but Iraq" to discredit every subsequent conclusion. You will be hard pressed to find that in my comment. I mentioned that to help temper the people who are apparently engaging in confirmation bias, accepting statements without evidence when it seems to align with their beliefs.

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#74

Post by iamnothere »

roywiggins wrote: post #68
IncRnd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must hang with a different crowd that doesn't add a specific # of parentheses to send dog-whistle messages. You should ask yourself, was the tweet wrong? Did the people who it referenced all have their names surrounded by ((( and )))? That would in fact be bizarre.

The echoes meme comes from a neonazi podcast who would play an echo sound effect behind every single mention of a Jewish sounding name. When people on Twitter put the (()) around their own names, they are intentionally marking themselves as Jewish so as to raise a middle finger to the neonazis who started the meme. So if someone references "people with (()) around their name", they're talking about Jews. That's who p…

It's actually more complicated than that. At the time (2016), most of the people who used the brackets for their own names were pro-establishment political types who wanted to make a public stand against the neo-Nazis. This included many people who were not Jews, in fact my own perception in 2016 was that most of the people who chose to use the brackets at the time were not in fact Jewish. As part of the daily conversation, WikiLeaks understood this! This totally changes the intent of the WikiLeaks tweet. My impression of the tweet has always been that they were skewering the mainstream political commentator class, who they perceive as being both virtue signaling (hence the brackets) and fashionably "intellectual" (hence the glasses).

Was it a stupid tweet, prone to misunderstanding? Absolutely. But one vague tweet does not justify labeling a person or organization as anti-Semitic.

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#75

Post by belorn »

wybiral wrote: post #65
belorn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean like this map ( http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G... ) created by a harvard study? You are right of course, it is important to know the bias of sources which is why so many fact checking sites popped up after 2016. Before then I would always go wikipedia for unbiased information. Sadly we live in a time where the majority of news papers has a clear and sometimes publicly stated pol…

It's impossible to eliminate bias. Even if it's not political bias some people just naturally agree more with one side of an issue or are more interested in certain subjects. But that doesn't mean that bias is irrelevant. In my opinion, having followed WikiLeaks over the years, I think it's safe to say that they have an anti-western intelligence/military bias. That doesn't mean that what they publish is untrue. It ju…

My interpretation of events is that before 2010 wikileaks operated mostly like a dumb disk drive that publish whatever with minimal editorial.

The War documents leak established them in international news, which change wikileaks tactic to more editorial style. This then resulted that they got the cable leak the next year.

After this there were internal fighting, blocking, ddos, economical blockades, volunteers being detained at airports and a lot of intelligence agency taking a lot of interests. The new "editorial" style also meant that they now held on to leaks rather than publishing.

And then we had the Swedish investigation and all that mess. Calls for assassinations, "enemy combatant", drones, diplomatic back channels, all contributed to a very antagonistic/paranoid relation between the US government and Assange personally. At this point there is nothing resembling the original style of wikileaks. I see it less like a "anti-western intelligence/military bias", but rather a anti-Hillary/US government bias.

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#76

Post by wybiral »

belorn wrote: post #75
wybiral wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to eliminate bias. Even if it's not political bias some people just naturally agree more with one side of an issue or are more interested in certain subjects. But that doesn't mean that bias is irrelevant. In my opinion, having followed WikiLeaks over the years, I think it's safe to say that they have an anti-western intelligence/military bias. That doesn't mean that what they publish is untrue. It ju…

My interpretation of events is that before 2010 wikileaks operated mostly like a dumb disk drive that publish whatever with minimal editorial. The War documents leak established them in international news, which change wikileaks tactic to more editorial style. This then resulted that they got the cable leak the next year. After this there were internal fighting, blocking, ddos, economical blockades, volunteers being…

> I see it less like a "anti-western intelligence/military bias", but rather a anti-Hillary/US government bias.

I can't disagree with that.

Then there are things like the Vault7 leaks, which were stoked by teaser announcements and theatrics. And while they did contain some surveillance tactics that seemed interesting they mostly contained tools and internal communication that was clearly sensitive and generally not information that the public even cared about (their exact code obfuscation algorithms?).

The net effect is that most people didn't care much while anti-western intelligence groups probably had a field day.

And given the sophistication to obtain the data it likely came from a nation state in the first place wishing to accomplish exactly that goal.

There's no way they didn't realize what they were doing. They played part in an attack.

Meanwhile Assange yawns at the Panama papers...

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#77

Post by Grue3 »

merinowool wrote: post #4
m52go wrote: post #2

If you want full control, you've got to be in full control. But you can't do that if you delegate that control to a third party. That's the whole point of bitcoin. Instead of complaining, WikiLeaks can set up their own payment processing server and do away with Coinbase altogether. Can't do that with a bank account!

But it is good to know what is coinbase's moral compass.

If they block Wikileaks (=Putin's propaganda), they must be good.

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#78

Post by return1 »

m52go wrote: post #2

If you want full control, you've got to be in full control. But you can't do that if you delegate that control to a third party. That's the whole point of bitcoin. Instead of complaining, WikiLeaks can set up their own payment processing server and do away with Coinbase altogether. Can't do that with a bank account!

how hard is it to create a payment gateway? open source projects?

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#79

Post by m52go »

return1 wrote: post #78
m52go wrote: post #2

If you want full control, you've got to be in full control. But you can't do that if you delegate that control to a third party. That's the whole point of bitcoin. Instead of complaining, WikiLeaks can set up their own payment processing server and do away with Coinbase altogether. Can't do that with a bank account!

how hard is it to create a payment gateway? open source projects?

Yes, for example, BTCPay Server:

https://github.com/btcpayserver/btcpayserver

Re: Coinbase blocks WikiLeaks Shop

#80

Post by matt4077 »

contingencies wrote: post #71
matt4077 wrote: post #5

Fun to see how bitcoin has come full circle in reinventing everything its cheerleaders initially railed against: fraud, then centralization, regulation, and now “censorship”. I guess the lesson here should be about the primacy of law, and how you won’t succeed in using technology to undermine it.

Don't be so defeatist. You can realistically sidestep law a few ways, eg. (1) by being fervently multi-jurisdiction (2) by being transparent and high-profile and community-popular enough ("think of the children!") to resist attempts at regulation (3) by throwing the dog a bone (ie. making it profitable for a jurisdiction not to legislate against you or interfere) (4) by being nominally jurisdictionless (ie. darknet o…

I was being triumphant rather than defeatist. I believe democratically enacted laws are far better than power being exerted by those with technological might against those without.
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