yes yes this is an excellent point what has *checks notes* edward snowden ever done to reveal the misbehavior of facebook and google, especially in the last 10 years
(Thread:) This is the reality of the fully commercialized mainstream internet: an indigestible mass of shortest-form opinions, purposefully selected by algorithms to agitate us on platforms that are designed to record and memorialize our most agitated, reflexive responses.
These responses are, in turn, elevated in proportion to their controversy to the attention — and prejudice — of the crowd. In the resulting zero-sum blood sport that public reputation requires, combatants are incentivized to occupy the most conventionally defensible positions...
...which reduces all politics to ideology and splinters the polis into squabbling tribes. The products of the irreconcilable differences this process produces are nothing more than well-divided "audiences," made available to the influence of advertisers...
@TheBlueMatt Public speaking is hard, but my intended point was not opaque: neither Taproot nor Lightning come even *close* to addressing Bitcoin's privacy problems -- and in fact even provoke arguments for how they hurt it (at least short term). That's not to say they're worthless...
@TheBlueMatt ...but they're not addressing the high severity problem confronting the ordinary bitcoin users who don't even notice fancysig faffery exists (beyond eventually reduced tx sizes). The thing is, I want to be wrong. But proving me wrong doesn't happen on Twitter. It happens on-chain
@TheBlueMatt I encourage you to make me look like an idiot. I will applaud you for it. Make the fixation on Lightning seem like a galaxy brain move instead of a colossal mistake by, for a start, getting the vast majority of transactions to happen there.
The worst part of cryptocurrency transforming into dragon-level wealth is witnessing good people emotionally devolve into dragons themselves: so intellectually paralyzed by the fear that everyone they see threatens their hoard that they lose sight of the world beyond their cave.
1) This is such a profoundly misleading TL;DR of a privacy-focused talk that it's hard to call it anything but intentionally deceptive.
2) To the extent I own crypto (unless and until it has been lost in boating accidents), I own more bitcoin than anything else—but
...despite the theoretical risk of harming the value of that ownership, I continue to criticize Bitcoin's (and other cryptocurrencies I hold) failings because the public cost of doing otherwise would be orders of magnitude greater than that individual private gain. Moral compass.
Laura Poitras, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who was the first to work on the top secret NSA mass surveillance story, has been fired by @TheIntercept in retaliation for speaking to the media about their mishandling of the Reality Winner case. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/medi…
I've said before that of all the journalists I worked with to break the mass surveillance story, none of them took operational security or source protection as seriously as Laura. I never once saw her cut a corner or break a rule. She was the only one who could make me feel lax.
The Chinese edition of my new book, #PermanentRecord, has just been censored. This violates the publishing agreement, so I'm going to resist it the way I know best: it's time to blow the whistle. You can help. Here's how: (THREAD)
I asked to see a copy of censored passages, and was given a list of a few of the worst examples. I'm going to post them right here on Twitter, and we're going to translate them and expose exactly what the censors were trying to hide. Let's use Twitter for something good.
Let us compile a correct and unabridged version of #PermanentRecord to publish freely online in Chinese, by assembling a cadre of translators to expose every shameful redaction the censors demanded. We will work in service to the greater Republic of Letters and a better internet.
@AlecMuffett@jenvalentino@runasand@nytimes@gabrieldance@SteveBellovin Solid point. Much reporting on LE access demands (or "concerns") overlooks that the powers they have today are unprecedented and abnormal in a way our constitutional system does not anticipate. Status quo "should" be presumptively undesirable, yet editorial tone implies otherwise
@AlecMuffett@jenvalentino@runasand@nytimes@gabrieldance@SteveBellovin From a human rights perspective, a global reduction in mass surveillance capability is a desirable reversion to the mean. It is astonishing, and I would argue discrediting, for those claiming a public safety interest advocating for any new means of surveillance "at scale."