Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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Explanation link was provided in my comment. Saying "but banks are also bad" doesn't change the fact that cryptocurrency/NFT/web3 scene is rife with scams.
But he didn't really say that banks are bad, or that the cryptocurrency/NFT/web3 scene isn't rife with scams.
Scams also existing in fiat currency (his point) doesn't make fiat bad, in the same way as cryptocurrency/NFT/web3 having good uses doesn't mean that it cannot also be "rife with scams".
Are hammers bad because people can use them to smash skulls? imho what we need is measures to prevent, block, minimize or discourage that kind of behavior, not necessarily ban hammers.
Personally, I think the open source and p2p nature of blockchain technology can be a better way to introduce measures of control and protection in a way that is fairer and more transparent than using obscure private ledgers on the hands of more central authorities managed by humans that we have to trust..
He dropped a bunch of links with zero context, initially. Interpretation was left to the reader.
No. But how a tool is designed influences heavily what it's good for and how it's used. A war hammer and a nail hammer are different hammers, useful for different things. One is way more useful for killing people. The other can also be used that way, but not nearly as effectively.
Same with the crypto scene. Most of the tools there are designed in such a way that they promote the power structures they claim to work against. Just look at secondary centralization of Bitcoin and Ethereum mining, how centralized wealth is in BTC and other cryptocurrencies. The scams there also don't come from nowhere and it is very telling that to deal with some of them (the Ethereum DAO thing I mentioned time and again, for example) the core promises of these very tools had to be broken (hard fork, blacklisted wallets, etc).
Just to be very clear, I am not claiming that these tools had been designed this way on purpose. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But that's what their design lends itself very well to.
Sure, and there are interesting projects in this scene. Nano Coin is one of them. Why? Because it explicitly acknowledges and tries to address the problems with almost all other cryptocurrency-ish projects out there.
And this is the conversation we should have had in this thread. But when somebody just knee-jerks, foams at their mouth, and keeps calling people names because they can't get over the fact that maybe their pet tech might have some problems that need to be recognized and addressed, it's hard to have such a conversation. One can either ignore such a person, or extract some entertainment value from their aggro. 😜
Yeah, I never said I'm a nice person.
Those are fair points. But I'm used to seeing so much bad press against NFT from people who blindedly criticise it and assotiate it with any possible bad use of it.. to the point that they think "NFT=bad", and this kind of news paints that picture for anyone who doesn't know better...
It would be like highlighting in the news every crime perpetrated by someone of color and then complain about "whataboutism" when someone says that white people also commit crimes.
I'm afraid that all this demonization will make it much much harder for any fair and honest project that we ever attempt in the future related to blockchain technology (such as the one you mentioned).
There is also an astonishing amount of shilling and pushing of NFTs. Media, sadly, often just prints ICO/NFT/etc projects' press releases and helps hype them, instead of doing some delving. And coinbros exploit that, extracting cold hard cash from people who see themselves as "investors", and who are in fact just participants in ponzi/pyramid schemes; crypto folk are even quite open about this sometimes:
And what I find particularly damning for the whole scene is that nobody from within the scene calls such crap out! FLOSS community is not perfect, for example, but bullshit gets called out. Projects that make exorbitant claims about security (snakeoil, etc), get called out. But crypto scene acts as if that's bad for business. Can't generate "bad press", right? Because if one does, they and potentially the whole scene is NGMI, HFBP!
And frankly, I have not yet seen a single use of NFTs that is not either unnecessary (as in: whatever is being done could be done as well or better without NFTs), or outright scammy/snakeoily (most of the time). Not. One.
So this "NFT=bad" association is, sadly, well-deserved. And those negative stories are, I feel, necessary; they would not be necessary if crypto people dealt with scams and snakeoil themselves. But they don't. 🤷♀️
I find that analogy really strained (especially in the context of all what I wrote above and the general scammyness of the whole crypto/NFT/web3 sphere) and difficult to engage with without touching on sensitive stuff related to xenophobia, racism, etc.
It probably will. But not calling out crypto/NFT/web3 scams just to preserve the few potentially useful and non-scammy projects would be effectively aiding and abeting the scammers. If people connected to the crypto community are worried about this kind of stuff, it's high time they start calling scammers and snakeoil peddlers in that community out and otherwise dealing with it themselves, instead if pushing back against any and all criticism.
I think we have to differentiate the technical factors from the human ones. Calling out security vulnerabilities is not a problem, but when the cause is between the monitor and the chair then things get much more complicated.
Just not for the wrong reasons. It would be silly to say "internet" = "porn", or "peer to peer" = "piracy", so for the same reason, "NFT" = "fraud" is just as misdirected, imho.
I'll agree to not continue with the simil about xenophobia since it's true that it's sensitive (though I do still think it does fit), but at least I hope you do accept these other broad generalizations that are mischaracterizing entire technologies that are very much different from that negative purpose someone might want to attribute to them due to how circunstancially "optimal" some specific instances might be for those purposes.
Saying "the association is well-deserved" already is admitting to the mischaracterization.
It would be great to find a solution for distributed domain names that was done well or better than what can be done with NFTs, it's something that p2p distributed networks haven't managed to solve without blockchain tech.
I'm all for calling any and all scams. Just as long as we separate the technology from the scam. My problem isn't with this article, but with the reactions in the comments that seem to jump to conclusions and paint things with broad strokes, assuming NFT = fraud.
This is all human-made. One way or another, the cause is always between monitor and the chair. One of the reasons I find the crypto space so toxic and dangerous is their insistence on technosolutionism.
Your analogy falls apart due to how small the ratio of non-scammy uses of NFTs to scammy ones is. Internet is actually useful for other things than porn, peer-to-peer is actually useful for more things than unlicensed non-gatekeeped access to culture ("piracy" is stealing shit on the high seas). There might be useful ways to employ NFTs, but I have not seen them.
And again: the fact that NFT proponents focus on pushing back against any and all criticism instead of spending this energy on pushing back against scammers in the crypto sphere is very telling.
And they will not be able to solve it with blockchain tech.
The difficult problems in domain names are not related to figuring out who controls which name when, they are related to whether or not someone should be allowed to control a given name at a given time.
We're talking legal issues (trademarks, scams, malware watering holes, etc), disputes (should I be allowed to control the name associated with a different entity/person? sometimes I should, parody and criticism are important; sometimes I shouldn't, online harassment is a real thing). Neither of these can be written down in code, be it on blockchain or not.
These are ultimately human issues that need to be sorted out (often piecemeal, due to infinite complexity of human relations) by humans. As are other issues that blockchain-based boondoggles were proposed for, like: the "AbortionDAO" galaxy-brained idea linked before, or the "fix journalism with crypto" idea from a few years back, or the "fix climate with crypto" thing, or trying to pretend NFTs help artists (they don't).
There is a reason I keep saying that blockchain tech is a solution in search of a problem. But it's worse than that: what keeps happening, as with all the "great ideas" mentioned above, is that cryptobros decide "we will solve
<this complicated problem>with crypto", and ignore the nuances and complexities involved. This inevitably leads to people who have been involved in a given scene for years or decades going "oh for fuck's sake, just stop!", and now they have to spend their limited energy and resources not only on trying to fix the problem itself, but also on pushing back against clueless technosolutionists whose ideas actually make things worse.It's literally this XKCD, but with "crypto" instead of "algorithms". And with even less self-awareness (in the comic strip at least the "algo bro" admits in the end that the problem is perhaps a bit more complicated than he expected; haven't seen such behavior from cryptobros yet).
And the worst part is that this is assuming that the cryptobro in question honestly and genuinely wants to help solve a problem, instead of trying to cash out by associating their crypto scam with an important issue and using this to drive it "to the moon". Which seems to be the case quite often, too.
If the shoe fits...
Preciselly, you can't stop technosolutionism if you don't differentiate between the technical factors and the human ones.
Saying technical issues are all the same as human ones or in the same level (just because they are "human-made") is in fact technosolutionist.
The goal is to solve human issues by manipulating technology, not solving problems in the technology by manipulating humans. Manipulating humans is not in the same level as manipulating technology... I think that this should be pretty clear.
The issue is that if the nature of NFTs already makes such purchases "scammy" for you then, of course, most of it will be "scammy". But note that something feeling scammy to you is not the same as committing actual fraud. If someone is fully aware that they are buying something because they purposefully want to speculate with it in an extremely unstable market, then it's their own fault if the risk they took doesn't pay off. That's not the same thing as getting scammed.
Myself, I'm not one to invest in such risks, and in fact, right now my bank is charging me money just because I have the money stored in my account doing nothing, which it makes no sense that they'd charge me for that! I wish I could just have it all as cash stored in a vault at home and don't need banks, but sadly sending cash by post is not exactly secure (nor generally accepted). It's too bad there isn't a safe and government-backed cryptocurrency infrastructure in place. I would certainly find that useful.
Some have already used the blockchain for that purpose though. Gittorrent used the bitcoin blockchain before (I'm not up to date on what's the current state on that project, I hear it's no longer maintained and there are other alternatives). And there's also the ENS for .eth domain names which are distributed, or am I wrong?
But those are human issues, they should not be in the code itself, just like they aren't in the code of current DNS servers either. Instead, the tech should just be transparent and flexible enough to allow that kind of human control (again, humans are meant to manipulate the technology, not the other way around).
If anything, I'd imagine a public ledger in a blockchain with proper authorization using government issued signatures would make it easier to track and identify the owner and have legislation impart whatever sanction or punishment. Wouldn't it? (I'm not even sure if the current DNS system allows this, I believe you can get domain names with some level of anonymity if you really want to).
I think the problem here is getting to the sweet spot between privacy and identification, maybe with different levels for different purposes. If this was controlled by each government and there were some layers in place and measures that allowed some level of anonymity at the same time as allowed disclosure in circumstances that require it, this could be a tool very controlled and safe.
In particular, I think a public p2p ledger would be helpful to have traceability of public funds in a way that can be peer-reviewed without depending on the government "accidentally" losing a hard disk or destroying evidence "by mistake". Which is something I've seen happen more than once in my country whenever there's an internal investigation for corruption.
Ah, I see. Idk why they saying that, why defend crypto/NFTs? They are extremely predatory, and I can tell that from just looking in from the outside. have a nice day
Saying "apples are horrible" does not defend oranges. Two things can be bad at the same time. This is not a competition.
very true! The dude also has quite the shit comment history, what a load of garbage.
There is some entertainment value to this, though. Does brighten the day, in a weird way. 😄
Go fuck yourself you dumb communist removed
How... eloquent
Go to China and live in the countryside to experience your egalitarian and efficient utopia
okay? that really isn't the threat you think it is.
why is that socialists are always on the internet complaining about the horrible west instead of living in their utopia
because some of us aren't stupid and realize money is a problem. You can't just move to goddamn china. I swear you capitalists just like being ignorant or just in that mindset permanently
Greed is a problem. Debt is a problem. Money... is a tool. One that enables them, but one that is also somewhat useful. As long as it's not an end in and of itself (which is, incidentally, exactly what capitalism is about, and exactly what cryptocurrencies are about, and that is exactly why I said cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist).
Graeber's analysis is fascinating. In small communities (say, a village) until, say ~18th century, money was simply not needed for day-to-day stuff. In fact, it was notoriously difficult to get coins in large enough quantity to go about regular daily business (buying food, selling your wares, etc).
So people did what they always do in small, closely-knit communities: operated on credit. And in many of those communities every now and then (maybe once per year or six months, depending on the community) there was a reckoning, where people's credit was cleared against each other, and what was left to pay was paid in coin.
Actual money was used when a given transaction was happening with someone who was not from that community — a traveler, for example — as it was impossible to expect them to come to the reckoning or otherwise be around long enough to "balance the books" so to speak.
It's all sorts of more nuanced, of course, and Graeber goes into all that nuance. Really good read, and very much on-topic.
Anyway, can't wait for our friend to pontificate on how all of this is wrong and never happened and how Graeber — having done decades of scientific research both as an anthropologist and as an economist — has no clue what he's talking about. 🙂
an economist who doesn't even understand the difference between mainstream and austrian economists, how what was possible in the 18th century for tight-knit communities is not possible for modern day nation states and how even a left wing website admits that this is less an economics book and more propaganda
You forgot your monocle emojo. Here, take mine: 🧐
if you're an economist I don't think it's that farfetched that you should know the beliefs of the most dominant school of economic thought especially considering your whole thing is criticizing them and any introductory material in the field would introduce you to their beliefs.
I think it's far fetched to assume, especially without having read any of his works, that Graeber doesn't know Austrian economics. 🤣
he gives ludwig von mises as an example of a mainstream economist so yeah it's clear he doesn't
Again, monocle! Here: 🧐
yeah so he's a fraud
🧐
then get the money and go to china and leave us capitalists alone
No. And yes people can just "get money to move" my god you are worse than a republican. China has very strict immigration, and even then won't let foreigners into the CPC.
I can just join the communist parties here to annoy you and make your country the way it must be.
fuck off and go raise funds to bring about the glorious revolution and ruin your own country