Oddbean

Whenever I hear the pseudonymity “skin in the game” argument, it seems always framed in a manner that centers around speech and accountability of an individual to a wider (very much anonymous) internet community. But this accountability tradeoff we know is not an equal one. To appease one cyber landlord in this manner (so Jordan Peterson can sleep well at night) is to expose oneself, family, and sometimes community to myriad vulnerabilities. It’s not a fair trade, it never has been, and #nostr fixes this. The internet will always be an opaque arena in one way or another, it’s crucial that it remains that way. The alternative is a dystopian nightmare. The freedom to choose here is the point. If you desire verified human faces to interact with on the internet, don’t worry, your wish is coming true.

I addressed all of that in the post. And I don’t care about Jordan Peterson. You are not posting under your name to appease anyone — it’s to exercise your own rights and beat back the censors. Do you realize people were canceled for saying trans women shouldn’t compete against real women in sports, even though that was a majority opinion? The only reason that happened is because people went along with it even though they knew it was ridiculous. That’s what you’re doing under a nym. Going along with everything then dissenting in a place where it can’t be counted.

I fought that fight on Twitter (and that was a bit rough as they tagged my job) and I see the same straw-man, out-of-context, personal insults going on here, even with my tepid (I’d *encourage but not require* people to post under their real name) take. But sticks and stones. They won’t shut me up.

I’m not here to spout politics, there’s enough of that on other platforms. I’m interested in keeping up with the latest technology, interacting with it, and being around the bitcoin community with the most signal. I sort of get the “stand and be counted” argument you’re making but I can’t get around unbalanced tradeoffs it creates. Sure, you get to stand for a greater cause and “the man” or whomever can audit and say, wow look, all these real people have a belief. For me it gets back to—verifiable to whom? Also the platform is such right now that zaps are fairly transparent. Nostr has pulled back the veil in certain regards and put “faces” and names with certain lightning transactions. Requiring verifiable humans, I feel opens a can of worms around financial sovereignty.

yeah, I can see that — as I said I created a separate account to ask technical questions for op sec reasons too. But yeah, I don’t think it’s so much about particular verifiability as there can always be fakes, but generally if people were really fed up with something, and it was just posted openly by prominent and regular people alike, the State would take notice in a hurry. I would also like to see financial transactions to be as private as possible where desired. Maybe there’s a way for NOSTR to join zaps in a pool and unjoin them to obscure it to third parties.