Help us fight censorship
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:50 am
The last post I wrote here, viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1048, was perhaps the most influential I've ever written, despite its relatively mundane topic of political opposition. You know that you've been successful in your mission when you achieve suddenly getting banned from not one, but several, forums all at once for technical violations of guidelines that I and others had been more severely violating without incident for over two years. In issuing the bans, however, the administrators set a precedent that will significantly set back their goal of preventing discussion and stagnating bitcoin. In this post, I'll provide an overview of what happened, the reasons why the Core supporters' actions are illogical, and how those who support progress now have the power to move bitcoin discussion elsewhere by depriving censored forums of content.
The article was posted to reddit's /r/btc, /r/bitcoin, /r/litecoin, and other subreddits and forums. 8-12 hours after posting, in a pattern that usually occurs on bitcoin forums, highly negative users appeared to post snide remarks and downvote constructive comments. After threatening to get the post banned, one of the users of /r/btc must have contacted a moderator who had it removed on the grounds that it "doxxed" Michael Marquadt (theymos). On the positive side, no other subreddits or forums responded to the reports and some moderators even saw through what was happening.
I performed some research to figure out what the generally agreed definition of "doxing" is. Doxing, from what I can gather from Internet searching, is generally regarded as the posting of personally identifiable information of anonymous Internet users. Sites like 4chan are known for doxes where people's contact information like addresses, cell phones, images, and social security numbers often turn up. To most people, posting such information is undesirable because it theoretically invites abuse. While I understand the theory, I'll mention in passing that the idea that any physical consequences occur questionable - although my number is posted on our main site for two years, nobody has ever called it, even a legitimate customer. It wouldn't be surprising to me if there has never in recorded history been a verified instance of a firebombing of the house of someone whose information was posted on the Internet.
To me, I offer that one of the two important reasons that such detailed information should be prohibited is that when done maliciously, doxing makes some people feel threatened, and anything that makes people feel threatened not only hurts a community but is morally wrong. The other reason is simply that the information is irrelevant to the discussion and can improperly bias the forum's users. Whether a person lives in California or China, or is tall or short, is black or white or Jewish or Muslim, or (most insidiously) is male or female, can significantly alter some forum users' behavior and treatment of the doxed user.
In the case of the previous article, however, the only information included was the names of Marquadt, Maxwell, and Todd, so I have to assume that this was what the concerned moderators considered "doxes." There was no information provided about random users, and the inclusion of the name was an afterthought, rather than a malicious link aimed to disseminate someone's phone number. If their actions were taken solely because I mentioned the names of the Core developers, then it should be made very clear that Michael Marquadt, Roger Ver, and the anonymous trolls supporting them are succeeding in expanding the Core's censorship into other subreddits and forums. The idea that Marquadt, who owns almost all of the major media sources for the cryptocurrency industry, and Maxwell and Todd, who are perhaps the most well known developers in Bitcoin, are not public figures is an obvious sham.
But let's suppose that you disagree with that statement, and believe that real names should never be used (I'll get into why journalists use real names in a few paragraphs.) In that case, you can read back through the entire "Prohashing Blog" forum, and the "Bitcoin Thoughts" forum before that, and see hundreds of posts where the names of these people were included. The posts date back for years and had hundreds of thousands of impressions. Not only that, all the posts on the "Bitcoin Thoughts" forum were posted directly on reddit and copied elsewhere. The distinction of where the posts were made is an important one, because the policy of these moderators is that any external forum linked in a reddit post must be clean of birth names. I have no problem with avoiding the use of names in their own forums, but since the name now only has to be present on the linked page, that means that anyone can be banned at any time if an unrelated user on the external forum replies to the original post and refers to anyone by his or her name in passing.
Here are a few examples of such posts that are still present on /r/btc, /r/bitcoin, and elsewhere (yes, even Marquadt himself allowed these posts with his name to remain online in his forums for years):
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=851 (600 impressions)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=914 (6500 impressions)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=871 (> 3000 impressions)
And at https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5 ... out_being/, among other places, we see where other users exhibited the exact same behavior and the post was not removed. The 100 upvotes clearly show that Ver's readers are not in agreement with his censorship.
Therefore, what actually happened was that the previous post hit a nerve with the Bitcoin Core or with Marquadt himself. Perhaps someone else initially brought the post to their attention. Someone decided to look through the rulebook and see how they could expand their censorship as widely as possible. They found that they could start enforcing their "dox" rule as the excuse they needed. Finally, whoever it was convinced Roger Ver and others to join in, and now the Core's influence extends to /r/btc. Remember how everyone worshipped him as "Jesus," he supposedly created an uncensored forum, and his bitcoin.com was supposed to be an alternative to bitcointalk.org? Apparently the periodic complaints that keep appearing about missing posts have merit, and he is no better than Marquadt is. When asked to explain the rules to his forums and given 2 days to reply, Ver refused to respond to multiple requests for comment.
In the end, there now exists a ludicrous situation where posts where commenters rage against each other with profanity and putdowns are ignored in plain view without even a warning, while simply providing a link to an offsite post where someone's name is included results in an immediate and permanent ban.
What's key about this escalation is that the censors recognize that the only way to now avoid permanent bans is if owners of other forums modify their rules so that the same articles censored on their forums are also censored on the external forums. Thus, if we and others do not respond, the censorship will spread even further as owners of other forums fall in line. Writers who depend on advertising for their income are therefore going to come under pressure to write their copy so as to be as unobjectionable as possible. This is likely their end goal. It is invisible, and could explain why the paid bitcoin media is so biased towards the Core; even people who have good intentions are subtely modifying their articles to be conformant so they remain in the good graces of those in charge.
This is why I must stand up for journalistic integrity. We saw how an investigation found that Marquadt had questionable dealings with a business in Hawaii several years ago. The next time that critical information surfaces about someone in the industry, I would not be able to publish it were I to take no action and apologize. Imagine that a newspaper article were to surface that named an /r/bitcoin or /r/btc moderator as a participant in a criminal scheme and the article's headline was "Forum moderator {whoever's name here} involved in corruption scheme." Respectable journalism requires writers to be able to report truthfully and independently so that accurate information is presented to the public. How are we supposed to hold people to account if we can't say their names? How could new readers understand my articles if I have to "talk around" information that is restricted in other places?
As I made clear before the posts were removed, regardless of whether or not I am banned I am not going to allow the Core's and Roger Ver's censorship to extend to our forums. Users here are free to use the given names of important people, including that of Michael Marquadt (theymos). I will not comply with any restrictions on linking to this site in an appropriate context on other forums, and therefore will cease participating in places where I am warned or banned for doing so.
The biggest issues hindering Bitcoin right now are freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Once those are achieved, I'm confident that a blocksize agreement can be reached quickly. I hope that others agree that we need to do everything we can to stop censorship and reduce the popularity of forums that participate in it. Fortunately, the incident with the last article has set a precedent that has given those who oppose censorship a lot of power. Here's a simple plan you can do to help:
If you own a website or forum, consider adding "Michael Marquadt is theymos" in small print to the site's footer. This is what we have done.
If you don't feel comfortable doing that, "dox" me instead by including some combination of my contact information from https://prohashing.com/contact.html in the footer. There is a precedent where people have been banned at censored forums (over my disapproval) for posting my information as well.
Visit industry news websites and mention your or my or the real name of an industry leader in context in a constructive comment. Target articles that have many upvotes.
Read posts on censored forums and report every post that "violates" anti-"dox" rules linking to external sites with this information for a ban.
Contact owners of influential sites and suggest that they read this post and consider joining in.
DO NOT post spam on blogs with no redeeming value other than these statements.
DO NOT include unnecessary and unreasonable information like addresses.
DO NOT use the names of people other than industry figures, you, or me.
If enough people are willing to participate, then eventually the censored forums will be forced to respond. They may choose to reverse their policies, in which case we will have achieved a reduction in censorship. Alternatively, these sites will quickly become starved for content and users who are banned will become angry. Users who are looking for content will join users who have been banned and will move to uncensored forums.
There's also another reason to participate. You probably don't want your content discussed in forums where the discussion is manipulated and you can be portrayed inaccurately. Adopting one of these messages effectively restricts discussion to forums where it will be discussed fairly. For example, I know that there won't be any more threads about my posts where 20 rude and irrelevant putdowns comprise the entirety of the discussion.
The power of the press is great, and achieving freedom of expression is probably the greatest step that can be taken to resume progress in Bitcoin. The Core was obviously scared by the previous post, as it pointed out that their features are not being adopted and their power is weakening. No special skills, other than being able to be restrained and civil, are necessary. I'm going to start today by contacting owners of websites. Take a few minutes today and help start fighting back against this threat to an industry that has become a big part of our lives.
The article was posted to reddit's /r/btc, /r/bitcoin, /r/litecoin, and other subreddits and forums. 8-12 hours after posting, in a pattern that usually occurs on bitcoin forums, highly negative users appeared to post snide remarks and downvote constructive comments. After threatening to get the post banned, one of the users of /r/btc must have contacted a moderator who had it removed on the grounds that it "doxxed" Michael Marquadt (theymos). On the positive side, no other subreddits or forums responded to the reports and some moderators even saw through what was happening.
I performed some research to figure out what the generally agreed definition of "doxing" is. Doxing, from what I can gather from Internet searching, is generally regarded as the posting of personally identifiable information of anonymous Internet users. Sites like 4chan are known for doxes where people's contact information like addresses, cell phones, images, and social security numbers often turn up. To most people, posting such information is undesirable because it theoretically invites abuse. While I understand the theory, I'll mention in passing that the idea that any physical consequences occur questionable - although my number is posted on our main site for two years, nobody has ever called it, even a legitimate customer. It wouldn't be surprising to me if there has never in recorded history been a verified instance of a firebombing of the house of someone whose information was posted on the Internet.
To me, I offer that one of the two important reasons that such detailed information should be prohibited is that when done maliciously, doxing makes some people feel threatened, and anything that makes people feel threatened not only hurts a community but is morally wrong. The other reason is simply that the information is irrelevant to the discussion and can improperly bias the forum's users. Whether a person lives in California or China, or is tall or short, is black or white or Jewish or Muslim, or (most insidiously) is male or female, can significantly alter some forum users' behavior and treatment of the doxed user.
In the case of the previous article, however, the only information included was the names of Marquadt, Maxwell, and Todd, so I have to assume that this was what the concerned moderators considered "doxes." There was no information provided about random users, and the inclusion of the name was an afterthought, rather than a malicious link aimed to disseminate someone's phone number. If their actions were taken solely because I mentioned the names of the Core developers, then it should be made very clear that Michael Marquadt, Roger Ver, and the anonymous trolls supporting them are succeeding in expanding the Core's censorship into other subreddits and forums. The idea that Marquadt, who owns almost all of the major media sources for the cryptocurrency industry, and Maxwell and Todd, who are perhaps the most well known developers in Bitcoin, are not public figures is an obvious sham.
But let's suppose that you disagree with that statement, and believe that real names should never be used (I'll get into why journalists use real names in a few paragraphs.) In that case, you can read back through the entire "Prohashing Blog" forum, and the "Bitcoin Thoughts" forum before that, and see hundreds of posts where the names of these people were included. The posts date back for years and had hundreds of thousands of impressions. Not only that, all the posts on the "Bitcoin Thoughts" forum were posted directly on reddit and copied elsewhere. The distinction of where the posts were made is an important one, because the policy of these moderators is that any external forum linked in a reddit post must be clean of birth names. I have no problem with avoiding the use of names in their own forums, but since the name now only has to be present on the linked page, that means that anyone can be banned at any time if an unrelated user on the external forum replies to the original post and refers to anyone by his or her name in passing.
Here are a few examples of such posts that are still present on /r/btc, /r/bitcoin, and elsewhere (yes, even Marquadt himself allowed these posts with his name to remain online in his forums for years):
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=851 (600 impressions)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=914 (6500 impressions)
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=871 (> 3000 impressions)
And at https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5 ... out_being/, among other places, we see where other users exhibited the exact same behavior and the post was not removed. The 100 upvotes clearly show that Ver's readers are not in agreement with his censorship.
Therefore, what actually happened was that the previous post hit a nerve with the Bitcoin Core or with Marquadt himself. Perhaps someone else initially brought the post to their attention. Someone decided to look through the rulebook and see how they could expand their censorship as widely as possible. They found that they could start enforcing their "dox" rule as the excuse they needed. Finally, whoever it was convinced Roger Ver and others to join in, and now the Core's influence extends to /r/btc. Remember how everyone worshipped him as "Jesus," he supposedly created an uncensored forum, and his bitcoin.com was supposed to be an alternative to bitcointalk.org? Apparently the periodic complaints that keep appearing about missing posts have merit, and he is no better than Marquadt is. When asked to explain the rules to his forums and given 2 days to reply, Ver refused to respond to multiple requests for comment.
In the end, there now exists a ludicrous situation where posts where commenters rage against each other with profanity and putdowns are ignored in plain view without even a warning, while simply providing a link to an offsite post where someone's name is included results in an immediate and permanent ban.
What's key about this escalation is that the censors recognize that the only way to now avoid permanent bans is if owners of other forums modify their rules so that the same articles censored on their forums are also censored on the external forums. Thus, if we and others do not respond, the censorship will spread even further as owners of other forums fall in line. Writers who depend on advertising for their income are therefore going to come under pressure to write their copy so as to be as unobjectionable as possible. This is likely their end goal. It is invisible, and could explain why the paid bitcoin media is so biased towards the Core; even people who have good intentions are subtely modifying their articles to be conformant so they remain in the good graces of those in charge.
This is why I must stand up for journalistic integrity. We saw how an investigation found that Marquadt had questionable dealings with a business in Hawaii several years ago. The next time that critical information surfaces about someone in the industry, I would not be able to publish it were I to take no action and apologize. Imagine that a newspaper article were to surface that named an /r/bitcoin or /r/btc moderator as a participant in a criminal scheme and the article's headline was "Forum moderator {whoever's name here} involved in corruption scheme." Respectable journalism requires writers to be able to report truthfully and independently so that accurate information is presented to the public. How are we supposed to hold people to account if we can't say their names? How could new readers understand my articles if I have to "talk around" information that is restricted in other places?
As I made clear before the posts were removed, regardless of whether or not I am banned I am not going to allow the Core's and Roger Ver's censorship to extend to our forums. Users here are free to use the given names of important people, including that of Michael Marquadt (theymos). I will not comply with any restrictions on linking to this site in an appropriate context on other forums, and therefore will cease participating in places where I am warned or banned for doing so.
The biggest issues hindering Bitcoin right now are freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Once those are achieved, I'm confident that a blocksize agreement can be reached quickly. I hope that others agree that we need to do everything we can to stop censorship and reduce the popularity of forums that participate in it. Fortunately, the incident with the last article has set a precedent that has given those who oppose censorship a lot of power. Here's a simple plan you can do to help:
If you own a website or forum, consider adding "Michael Marquadt is theymos" in small print to the site's footer. This is what we have done.
If you don't feel comfortable doing that, "dox" me instead by including some combination of my contact information from https://prohashing.com/contact.html in the footer. There is a precedent where people have been banned at censored forums (over my disapproval) for posting my information as well.
Visit industry news websites and mention your or my or the real name of an industry leader in context in a constructive comment. Target articles that have many upvotes.
Read posts on censored forums and report every post that "violates" anti-"dox" rules linking to external sites with this information for a ban.
Contact owners of influential sites and suggest that they read this post and consider joining in.
DO NOT post spam on blogs with no redeeming value other than these statements.
DO NOT include unnecessary and unreasonable information like addresses.
DO NOT use the names of people other than industry figures, you, or me.
If enough people are willing to participate, then eventually the censored forums will be forced to respond. They may choose to reverse their policies, in which case we will have achieved a reduction in censorship. Alternatively, these sites will quickly become starved for content and users who are banned will become angry. Users who are looking for content will join users who have been banned and will move to uncensored forums.
There's also another reason to participate. You probably don't want your content discussed in forums where the discussion is manipulated and you can be portrayed inaccurately. Adopting one of these messages effectively restricts discussion to forums where it will be discussed fairly. For example, I know that there won't be any more threads about my posts where 20 rude and irrelevant putdowns comprise the entirety of the discussion.
The power of the press is great, and achieving freedom of expression is probably the greatest step that can be taken to resume progress in Bitcoin. The Core was obviously scared by the previous post, as it pointed out that their features are not being adopted and their power is weakening. No special skills, other than being able to be restrained and civil, are necessary. I'm going to start today by contacting owners of websites. Take a few minutes today and help start fighting back against this threat to an industry that has become a big part of our lives.