Is Filecoin Useful for Citizens Living in Authoritarian Regimes?
Is Filecoin Useful for Citizens Living in Authoritarian Regimes?
By
Kevin Mauro
March 17th, 2023
Is Filecoin useful for citizens in authoritarian regimes? A technology underlying Filecoin, called IPFS, may be useful for citizens in authoritarian regimes under very particular use cases, but Filecoin itself - which was partly designed to create financial incentives for hosting data on IPFS - is not very useful for citizens living in authoritarian regimes. Developers from Filecoin did not seem to design their network following what leading political scientists say is needed to overthrow authoritarians, but instead have attempted to force their technology into being an ineffective solution for this problem. When we consider its technical features, Filecoin implies that the internet’s “fragile infrastructures” and “single points of failure” are somehow overcomable through using its network, when quite the opposite is true. Both IPFS and Filecoin are vulnerable to many of the same attacks used on traditional network infrastructures, but IPFS and Filecoin have additional problems compared to previous systems, including a public network for files leading to easy censorship of entire networks (IPFS), the need to obtain cryptocurrency before using the network (Filecoin), and open-source code allowing authoritarian operators to join these networks and ban nodes’ IP addresses through control of their nation’s network infrastructures (both), along with many more. These networks are not a problem for authoritarian regimes who are in control of network infrastructures and can enforce new laws on a whim. They are a problem for stagnant democracies who would like to promote free speech, while preventing certain types of harmful content from being spread. These democracies need new laws to be passed within divided congresses in order to keep up with these changing technical landscapes, and these governments act more slowly than authoritarian regimes in banning these types of organized criminal behavior. These networks are not aimed attacks on authoritarian regimes, but attacks on human welfare as a whole.
Information that is bad for an authoritarian regime can be uploaded to Filecoin, where it may be replicated and shared outside the enforcement of the authoritarian country. These may be “state secrets” or some other kind of compromising content. Data like this can be a problem when it’s shared within the authoritarian regime, because it may help drive more of a country’s rebels towards rebellion (this is discussed in the third section). But, first, let’s consider whether the data can also be a problem when it’s accessed by outside actors. Potentially, foreign agents (foreign state departments, journalists, etc) could access this compromising data over a network like Filecoin, and then be motivated to assist rebels inside the country. Certainly, the financial incentives set-up over Filecoin may make it harder to take down this data once it’s gone international - but wait! Before we go any further, we must ask whether having this information in international hands is actually useful for people living in the authoritarian regime itself. According to Gene Sharp in his 1993 essay, From Dictatorship to Democracy, this is a misconception that many early, budding rebellions face.
“A few harsh realities concerning reliance on foreign intervention need to be emphasized here:
Frequently, foreign states will tolerate, or even positively assist, a dictatorship in order to advance their own economic or political interests.
Foreign states also may be willing to sell out an oppressed people instead of keeping pledges to assist their liberation at the cost of another objective.
Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.”
Sharp’s essay, which is the most authoritative source I have found on turning dictatorships into democracies, makes a strong case against relying on outside help. Throughout his essay, Sharp argues to instead sprout seeds of rebellion among local groups (churches, universities, industries, etc) to bring about democracy organically. Relying on outside influence will just install a new authoritarian, favorable to the foreign actor, rather than providing any long-term benefit to the country’s citizens. Sharp’s essay makes a convincing case that sharing information to outside actors over a network like Filecoin is not useful for citizens living in an authoritarian regime.
Aside from the political angle, Filecoin’s technical features are not helpful for taking down authoritarianism. In the first 2 minutes of this trailer for Filecoin, there is an introductory problem statement describing the web’s “fragile infrastructures” and “single points of failure”. What this introduction is referring to is something that people often forget about the internet, which is that the internet is more than just software, but actual hardware - computers, antennas, wires, network-server hubs, all which operate in physical space in order to make the web function. Data physically moves over a nation-state’s centralized hub buildings, antennas, wires. The physical devices that connect the internet together often coalesce in just a few locations that the authoritarian regime almost always has control over, and can hijack into tools of censorship if needbe. This is why Mexican drug cartels have set up their own cellular network (antennas) over Mexico. It’s why the U.S. in Iran’s green zone has their own internet uplink (wires) directly to the greater internet outside the Iranian government’s control. It’s why people in Myanmar are begging Elon Musk for Starlink internet satellites. The Great Firewall of China is another example of internet infrastructure hubs being used for censorship. People in authoritarian regimes want their own *physical* paths around their government’s network infrastructure, as opposed to just software solutions like Filecoin and IPFS. The latter ultimately relies on this kind of network infrastructure connecting them to the outside world. It’s an important concept to remember that the physical links and hubs, like with almost every other software, are these network’s weak points. In the case of Filecoin and IPFS, here’s how it’s a weak point:
Filecoin and IPFS both rely on the hash values, or “fingerprints” of files that I mentioned in my blocklists video. IPFS is basically a public directory for finding files, allowing a person who knows the fingerprint for a file to find out where servers hosting a file are located, and download the corresponding file immediately from a corresponding IP address. My understanding is that Filecoin uses IPFS as a backbone to offer deliveries of files, even if Filecoin’s storage contract is between only two parties - the storage provider will still deliver the file to anyone who asks if they have the fingerprint, not just the uploader. They try to get around the privacy concerns here by recommending encryption, meaning that you would also need a decryption key to read the desired contents of the file. But that’s another topic. IPFS is ultimately just a public directory for files. You put a short string of characters in - a fingerprint - analogous to a URL - and you get a file out. In text form, a fingerprint might look like this: QmdbaSQbGU6Wo9i5LyWWVLuU8g6WrYpWh2K4Li4QuuE8Fr.
At first, the “public” nature of IPFS’s fingerprint-to-file directory seems anti-authoritarian. Nobody is in control of the directory itself, meaning anyone can broadcast they have a particular “fingerprint” on their server, and provide the file with that fingerprint when it is requested. That is, anyone can add themselves to the directory. But there’s a problem. If a dictator wanted to block a file from being accessed in their country, they could run their own IPFS node using the free and open-source software provided by its developers, and easily track the IP addresses hosting a particular file or files, and block citizens from accessing those IP addresses over the nation’s network infrastructure. They could even use ipfs-crawler to block every node hosting files on both Filecoin and IPFS. This is possible because of a process called “IP address resolution”. This is the process where an IP address (something like 192.168.1.1) is turned into a physical location somewhere on the globe. This process happens at high-level network infrastructure hubs, which an authoritarian regime is certainly in control of. The full chain looks like this:
A file fingerprint “QmdbaSQbGU6Wo9i5LyWWVLuU8g6WrYpWh2K4Li4QuuE8Fr” put in by a user resolves to IP address (192.168.1.1) using IPFS.
This IP address (192.168.1.1) resolves to a location somewhere on the globe using a government’s network infrastructure.
The file request is then sent to that location, where a computer is running that delivers back the file to the computer that requested it.
IPFS used to require users to have a fingerprint (1) of a file that they want to access before getting the IP address (2) and downloading the file (3). But, now there’s the network indexers feature recently added, which can allow a dictatorship to set up their own network index and receive volunteered fingerprints or perhaps even download a pre-existing list of fingerprints from another network index. This would give the dictatorship the ability to collect a large number of IP addresses on the network and block them in step 2. Alternatively, they can simply use software like ipfs-crawler to list all the IP addresses currently hosting files on IPFS. In both of these cases the authoritarian regime makes their move in step #2 above to break the network. Through these two main methods (either a network indexer or ipfs-crawler), the obtained list of IPFS’s IP addresses would be enough to severely cripple the globalwide network of IPFS within an authoritarian regime, and therefore Filecoin in that regime as well. So, not only is getting data out of the country ineffective (because foreign intervention isn’t necessarily good), but getting data into the country is easily blocked by authoritarians too, by means of obtaining lists of IP addresses from IPFS’s public nature and blocking them at the resolution step.
What about sharing data at the local level? This would be sharing data not with the greater internet, but among local communities of potential rebels. Imagine there is a university inside the authoritarian regime which has its own Wifi network (basically its own antenna system). This Wifi system relies on the regime’s internet uplink wires, so it suffers the same connection issues to the greater internet as the rest of the country. However, within this university Wifi network, there are thousands of students who can benefit from some of IPFS’s features (not Filecoin’s though!). IPFS was purposefully designed so that you could spin up a bunch of redundant nodes on a local IP network like this university WiFi network. IPFS is a public directory for files that can operate globally, or by changing some identifier settings, it can run on “private networks” that are just directories for a small group of people. IPFS offers many of the same replication features as Filecoin does, just without the Filecoin’s money aspect. People effectively are donating storage space using IPFS, rather than getting paid for it, and therefore there’s no guarantee that files stay hosted over long periods of time. A small group of local individuals would gladly donate extra space on their phones to replicate files if it meant bringing down an authoritarian regime. Assuming the authoritarians didn’t take over the university’s network infrastructure, people on this local wifi network at the university could redundantly share files and easily communicate with each other in a way that many apps aren’t designed to function under. These citizens would still have the same trouble accessing the outside internet in this scenario, but the files they shared locally could be spread across their phones very easily. IPFS is still vulnerable - it would require just an extra step by authoritarian regimes to take over a university’s network infrastructure - but this may come at a much larger social cost. This is the thin line between IPFS and Filecoin’s usefulness in an authoritarian scenario. Filecoin requires access to the outside internet for it to function. This is due to the nature of cryptocurrency financial networks, which are “global”. A “local” version of Filecoin inside a single country or local network would be financially weak and easily attacked by someone with the investment power of a nation-state, which would cause a “double-spend” and crash the price/economy of this “local” Filecoin network. It just wouldn’t be something of any value. Filecoin relies on the greater internet to be functional, but IPFS does not. Filecoin incentivizes the global IPFS network, but the global network is not useful for citizens in authoritarian regimes, because it is easily blocked. Independent, “offline” implementations of the IPFS codebase are what is useful in these localized situations. This is one more reason why Filecoin is particularly beneficial for widespread criminal networks (like child porn buyers and sellers) who aren’t necessarily in close proximity to each other. The global IPFS network is still beneficial for these criminals, but at least its codebase does offer some help on local networks in authoritarian regimes. It’s an important paragraph because the developers of these networks often conflate the two systems. If you start questioning them about Filecoin, they may answer with the benefits of IPFS, as a way to confuse you and avoid the question entirely.
It should be noted that messaging apps that do the same thing without using IPFS would perhaps be easier to use and obtain for these students. IPFS, at the local level, does not really have any magic sauce that would be impossible to write, package and deploy (e.g., on an app store) as a finalized application that functions as local software only, without the greater global network part. IPFS’s global network part is both troublesome and easily censorable by authoritarians through IP address resolution described earlier. So, I said a lot of positive things about IPFS, but the reality is that it’s probably still bad because you can do a lot of what it does in a purely local app, without the global network connections that are beneficial for illicit content sales. (Please note, markets like OpenBazaar, FileHive, and Audius all seem to use IPFS as well, meaning it is possible to use IPFS as a backbone for illicit sales, just as Filecoin does/plans/is-capable-of).
Finally, there are a number of practical, cultural realities regarding using something like Filecoin in an authoritarian regime. Without using wrapper-services Filecoin requires a cryptocurrency to function. This means you could either buy some from an exchange (which would probably require following a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process, which people in authoritarian regimes looking to upload damaging information about their government would absolutely not want to do, as it would require uploading their ID to an exchange), or by directly mining Filecoin itself. Filecoin mining is extremely expensive, requiring investment in hardware that may be upwards of a thousand dollars and complicated and time-consuming to set up - you can’t just use a laptop. You basically have to have a highly-capable and dedicated desktop computer for it. It is difficult to imagine a citizen in an authoritarian regime setting up a Filecoin miner, waiting to earn enough cryptocurrency, and then safely uploading a file (over a period of months), especially if an authoritarian was in control of the network infrastructure and could perhaps identify their miner based on its network traffic, and they definitely would not follow the KYC process for a cryptocurrency exchange. Filecoin, a cryptocurrency, is also culturally taboo, meaning if an authoritarian wanted to ban it tomorrow, they could do so without much of an uprising. Filecoin has a massive pre-sale by Andreeson Horowitz (greed) and is environmentally wasteful (see video on my channel) adding to the low social cost for a regime to censor it. There are just so many reasons why any government - not just authoritarians - would ban Filecoin that the social cost is incredibly low to do so. If Filecoin is a real threat to authoritarians, it should do a better job of overcoming all these awful parts, because right now it is very easy for authoritarians to ban it without much social uprising.
In contrast, a platform like Signal Messenger has a much better public perception, and would be more difficult for a regime to ban (higher social cost). Signal Messenger is free and doesn’t require uploading any identifying documents to a third-party, like a cryptocurrency exchange, to use. It doesn’t have an underlying financial mechanism which can be used to create industries that produce new and harmful content.
Both Filecoin and IPFS imply a level of censorship-resistance and anti-authoritarianism that is not there. Moving compromising data out of a dictator’s country and into foreign hands may at first seem like a good way to combat these kinds of regimes, but the reality is that it is not how to effectively bring lasting democracy to the afflicted citizens. Moving compromising data from outside an authoritarian country and back in using Filecoin and IPFS is easily censored by the regime in question alongside other forms of internet censorship already happening under its government. Moving data within a country over something like a university’s local WiFi network would provide a use case for IPFS but not Filecoin, and would be an effective way to sprout local change, though some alternatives should be considered as well. The difficulty in obtaining Filecoin’s cryptocurrency and its low social cost to censor make it practically useless for citizens in authoritarian regimes. Filecoin is legally, technically, socially, and morally easy-to-ban for authoritarian regimes, whereas democracies may have trouble drafting the new laws and explaining the particular risks to citizens prior to banning these platforms. In light of its inability to combat authoritarianism locally, it should be stated that Filecoin is particularly beneficial for scattered criminals who wish to buy and sell illicit files over the internet, threatening human welfare in both republics and dictatorships.
Просмотры:
By
Kevin Mauro
March 17th, 2023
Is Filecoin useful for citizens in authoritarian regimes? A technology underlying Filecoin, called IPFS, may be useful for citizens in authoritarian regimes under very particular use cases, but Filecoin itself - which was partly designed to create financial incentives for hosting data on IPFS - is not very useful for citizens living in authoritarian regimes. Developers from Filecoin did not seem to design their network following what leading political scientists say is needed to overthrow authoritarians, but instead have attempted to force their technology into being an ineffective solution for this problem. When we consider its technical features, Filecoin implies that the internet’s “fragile infrastructures” and “single points of failure” are somehow overcomable through using its network, when quite the opposite is true. Both IPFS and Filecoin are vulnerable to many of the same attacks used on traditional network infrastructures, but IPFS and Filecoin have additional problems compared to previous systems, including a public network for files leading to easy censorship of entire networks (IPFS), the need to obtain cryptocurrency before using the network (Filecoin), and open-source code allowing authoritarian operators to join these networks and ban nodes’ IP addresses through control of their nation’s network infrastructures (both), along with many more. These networks are not a problem for authoritarian regimes who are in control of network infrastructures and can enforce new laws on a whim. They are a problem for stagnant democracies who would like to promote free speech, while preventing certain types of harmful content from being spread. These democracies need new laws to be passed within divided congresses in order to keep up with these changing technical landscapes, and these governments act more slowly than authoritarian regimes in banning these types of organized criminal behavior. These networks are not aimed attacks on authoritarian regimes, but attacks on human welfare as a whole.
Information that is bad for an authoritarian regime can be uploaded to Filecoin, where it may be replicated and shared outside the enforcement of the authoritarian country. These may be “state secrets” or some other kind of compromising content. Data like this can be a problem when it’s shared within the authoritarian regime, because it may help drive more of a country’s rebels towards rebellion (this is discussed in the third section). But, first, let’s consider whether the data can also be a problem when it’s accessed by outside actors. Potentially, foreign agents (foreign state departments, journalists, etc) could access this compromising data over a network like Filecoin, and then be motivated to assist rebels inside the country. Certainly, the financial incentives set-up over Filecoin may make it harder to take down this data once it’s gone international - but wait! Before we go any further, we must ask whether having this information in international hands is actually useful for people living in the authoritarian regime itself. According to Gene Sharp in his 1993 essay, From Dictatorship to Democracy, this is a misconception that many early, budding rebellions face.
“A few harsh realities concerning reliance on foreign intervention need to be emphasized here:
Frequently, foreign states will tolerate, or even positively assist, a dictatorship in order to advance their own economic or political interests.
Foreign states also may be willing to sell out an oppressed people instead of keeping pledges to assist their liberation at the cost of another objective.
Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.”
Sharp’s essay, which is the most authoritative source I have found on turning dictatorships into democracies, makes a strong case against relying on outside help. Throughout his essay, Sharp argues to instead sprout seeds of rebellion among local groups (churches, universities, industries, etc) to bring about democracy organically. Relying on outside influence will just install a new authoritarian, favorable to the foreign actor, rather than providing any long-term benefit to the country’s citizens. Sharp’s essay makes a convincing case that sharing information to outside actors over a network like Filecoin is not useful for citizens living in an authoritarian regime.
Aside from the political angle, Filecoin’s technical features are not helpful for taking down authoritarianism. In the first 2 minutes of this trailer for Filecoin, there is an introductory problem statement describing the web’s “fragile infrastructures” and “single points of failure”. What this introduction is referring to is something that people often forget about the internet, which is that the internet is more than just software, but actual hardware - computers, antennas, wires, network-server hubs, all which operate in physical space in order to make the web function. Data physically moves over a nation-state’s centralized hub buildings, antennas, wires. The physical devices that connect the internet together often coalesce in just a few locations that the authoritarian regime almost always has control over, and can hijack into tools of censorship if needbe. This is why Mexican drug cartels have set up their own cellular network (antennas) over Mexico. It’s why the U.S. in Iran’s green zone has their own internet uplink (wires) directly to the greater internet outside the Iranian government’s control. It’s why people in Myanmar are begging Elon Musk for Starlink internet satellites. The Great Firewall of China is another example of internet infrastructure hubs being used for censorship. People in authoritarian regimes want their own *physical* paths around their government’s network infrastructure, as opposed to just software solutions like Filecoin and IPFS. The latter ultimately relies on this kind of network infrastructure connecting them to the outside world. It’s an important concept to remember that the physical links and hubs, like with almost every other software, are these network’s weak points. In the case of Filecoin and IPFS, here’s how it’s a weak point:
Filecoin and IPFS both rely on the hash values, or “fingerprints” of files that I mentioned in my blocklists video. IPFS is basically a public directory for finding files, allowing a person who knows the fingerprint for a file to find out where servers hosting a file are located, and download the corresponding file immediately from a corresponding IP address. My understanding is that Filecoin uses IPFS as a backbone to offer deliveries of files, even if Filecoin’s storage contract is between only two parties - the storage provider will still deliver the file to anyone who asks if they have the fingerprint, not just the uploader. They try to get around the privacy concerns here by recommending encryption, meaning that you would also need a decryption key to read the desired contents of the file. But that’s another topic. IPFS is ultimately just a public directory for files. You put a short string of characters in - a fingerprint - analogous to a URL - and you get a file out. In text form, a fingerprint might look like this: QmdbaSQbGU6Wo9i5LyWWVLuU8g6WrYpWh2K4Li4QuuE8Fr.
At first, the “public” nature of IPFS’s fingerprint-to-file directory seems anti-authoritarian. Nobody is in control of the directory itself, meaning anyone can broadcast they have a particular “fingerprint” on their server, and provide the file with that fingerprint when it is requested. That is, anyone can add themselves to the directory. But there’s a problem. If a dictator wanted to block a file from being accessed in their country, they could run their own IPFS node using the free and open-source software provided by its developers, and easily track the IP addresses hosting a particular file or files, and block citizens from accessing those IP addresses over the nation’s network infrastructure. They could even use ipfs-crawler to block every node hosting files on both Filecoin and IPFS. This is possible because of a process called “IP address resolution”. This is the process where an IP address (something like 192.168.1.1) is turned into a physical location somewhere on the globe. This process happens at high-level network infrastructure hubs, which an authoritarian regime is certainly in control of. The full chain looks like this:
A file fingerprint “QmdbaSQbGU6Wo9i5LyWWVLuU8g6WrYpWh2K4Li4QuuE8Fr” put in by a user resolves to IP address (192.168.1.1) using IPFS.
This IP address (192.168.1.1) resolves to a location somewhere on the globe using a government’s network infrastructure.
The file request is then sent to that location, where a computer is running that delivers back the file to the computer that requested it.
IPFS used to require users to have a fingerprint (1) of a file that they want to access before getting the IP address (2) and downloading the file (3). But, now there’s the network indexers feature recently added, which can allow a dictatorship to set up their own network index and receive volunteered fingerprints or perhaps even download a pre-existing list of fingerprints from another network index. This would give the dictatorship the ability to collect a large number of IP addresses on the network and block them in step 2. Alternatively, they can simply use software like ipfs-crawler to list all the IP addresses currently hosting files on IPFS. In both of these cases the authoritarian regime makes their move in step #2 above to break the network. Through these two main methods (either a network indexer or ipfs-crawler), the obtained list of IPFS’s IP addresses would be enough to severely cripple the globalwide network of IPFS within an authoritarian regime, and therefore Filecoin in that regime as well. So, not only is getting data out of the country ineffective (because foreign intervention isn’t necessarily good), but getting data into the country is easily blocked by authoritarians too, by means of obtaining lists of IP addresses from IPFS’s public nature and blocking them at the resolution step.
What about sharing data at the local level? This would be sharing data not with the greater internet, but among local communities of potential rebels. Imagine there is a university inside the authoritarian regime which has its own Wifi network (basically its own antenna system). This Wifi system relies on the regime’s internet uplink wires, so it suffers the same connection issues to the greater internet as the rest of the country. However, within this university Wifi network, there are thousands of students who can benefit from some of IPFS’s features (not Filecoin’s though!). IPFS was purposefully designed so that you could spin up a bunch of redundant nodes on a local IP network like this university WiFi network. IPFS is a public directory for files that can operate globally, or by changing some identifier settings, it can run on “private networks” that are just directories for a small group of people. IPFS offers many of the same replication features as Filecoin does, just without the Filecoin’s money aspect. People effectively are donating storage space using IPFS, rather than getting paid for it, and therefore there’s no guarantee that files stay hosted over long periods of time. A small group of local individuals would gladly donate extra space on their phones to replicate files if it meant bringing down an authoritarian regime. Assuming the authoritarians didn’t take over the university’s network infrastructure, people on this local wifi network at the university could redundantly share files and easily communicate with each other in a way that many apps aren’t designed to function under. These citizens would still have the same trouble accessing the outside internet in this scenario, but the files they shared locally could be spread across their phones very easily. IPFS is still vulnerable - it would require just an extra step by authoritarian regimes to take over a university’s network infrastructure - but this may come at a much larger social cost. This is the thin line between IPFS and Filecoin’s usefulness in an authoritarian scenario. Filecoin requires access to the outside internet for it to function. This is due to the nature of cryptocurrency financial networks, which are “global”. A “local” version of Filecoin inside a single country or local network would be financially weak and easily attacked by someone with the investment power of a nation-state, which would cause a “double-spend” and crash the price/economy of this “local” Filecoin network. It just wouldn’t be something of any value. Filecoin relies on the greater internet to be functional, but IPFS does not. Filecoin incentivizes the global IPFS network, but the global network is not useful for citizens in authoritarian regimes, because it is easily blocked. Independent, “offline” implementations of the IPFS codebase are what is useful in these localized situations. This is one more reason why Filecoin is particularly beneficial for widespread criminal networks (like child porn buyers and sellers) who aren’t necessarily in close proximity to each other. The global IPFS network is still beneficial for these criminals, but at least its codebase does offer some help on local networks in authoritarian regimes. It’s an important paragraph because the developers of these networks often conflate the two systems. If you start questioning them about Filecoin, they may answer with the benefits of IPFS, as a way to confuse you and avoid the question entirely.
It should be noted that messaging apps that do the same thing without using IPFS would perhaps be easier to use and obtain for these students. IPFS, at the local level, does not really have any magic sauce that would be impossible to write, package and deploy (e.g., on an app store) as a finalized application that functions as local software only, without the greater global network part. IPFS’s global network part is both troublesome and easily censorable by authoritarians through IP address resolution described earlier. So, I said a lot of positive things about IPFS, but the reality is that it’s probably still bad because you can do a lot of what it does in a purely local app, without the global network connections that are beneficial for illicit content sales. (Please note, markets like OpenBazaar, FileHive, and Audius all seem to use IPFS as well, meaning it is possible to use IPFS as a backbone for illicit sales, just as Filecoin does/plans/is-capable-of).
Finally, there are a number of practical, cultural realities regarding using something like Filecoin in an authoritarian regime. Without using wrapper-services Filecoin requires a cryptocurrency to function. This means you could either buy some from an exchange (which would probably require following a Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process, which people in authoritarian regimes looking to upload damaging information about their government would absolutely not want to do, as it would require uploading their ID to an exchange), or by directly mining Filecoin itself. Filecoin mining is extremely expensive, requiring investment in hardware that may be upwards of a thousand dollars and complicated and time-consuming to set up - you can’t just use a laptop. You basically have to have a highly-capable and dedicated desktop computer for it. It is difficult to imagine a citizen in an authoritarian regime setting up a Filecoin miner, waiting to earn enough cryptocurrency, and then safely uploading a file (over a period of months), especially if an authoritarian was in control of the network infrastructure and could perhaps identify their miner based on its network traffic, and they definitely would not follow the KYC process for a cryptocurrency exchange. Filecoin, a cryptocurrency, is also culturally taboo, meaning if an authoritarian wanted to ban it tomorrow, they could do so without much of an uprising. Filecoin has a massive pre-sale by Andreeson Horowitz (greed) and is environmentally wasteful (see video on my channel) adding to the low social cost for a regime to censor it. There are just so many reasons why any government - not just authoritarians - would ban Filecoin that the social cost is incredibly low to do so. If Filecoin is a real threat to authoritarians, it should do a better job of overcoming all these awful parts, because right now it is very easy for authoritarians to ban it without much social uprising.
In contrast, a platform like Signal Messenger has a much better public perception, and would be more difficult for a regime to ban (higher social cost). Signal Messenger is free and doesn’t require uploading any identifying documents to a third-party, like a cryptocurrency exchange, to use. It doesn’t have an underlying financial mechanism which can be used to create industries that produce new and harmful content.
Both Filecoin and IPFS imply a level of censorship-resistance and anti-authoritarianism that is not there. Moving compromising data out of a dictator’s country and into foreign hands may at first seem like a good way to combat these kinds of regimes, but the reality is that it is not how to effectively bring lasting democracy to the afflicted citizens. Moving compromising data from outside an authoritarian country and back in using Filecoin and IPFS is easily censored by the regime in question alongside other forms of internet censorship already happening under its government. Moving data within a country over something like a university’s local WiFi network would provide a use case for IPFS but not Filecoin, and would be an effective way to sprout local change, though some alternatives should be considered as well. The difficulty in obtaining Filecoin’s cryptocurrency and its low social cost to censor make it practically useless for citizens in authoritarian regimes. Filecoin is legally, technically, socially, and morally easy-to-ban for authoritarian regimes, whereas democracies may have trouble drafting the new laws and explaining the particular risks to citizens prior to banning these platforms. In light of its inability to combat authoritarianism locally, it should be stated that Filecoin is particularly beneficial for scattered criminals who wish to buy and sell illicit files over the internet, threatening human welfare in both republics and dictatorships.
Коментарі
Дописати коментар
Олег Мічман в X: «Donations and support for media resources, bloggers, projects, and individuals. https://t.co/HPKsNRd4Uo https://t.co/R6NXVPK62M» / X
https://twitter.com/olukawy/status/1703876551505309973