The alarms are valid.
The images are harmful.
But I am deeply concerned that in our rush to condemn the new technology, we are misdiagnosing the cause.
The problem is not the tool.
The problem is the user.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jun/12/o...
To suggest otherwise is to suggest anyone should be able to buy nuclear weapons which on their own do nothing.
Bad actors can only leverage what exists. All the benefits and harms comes from the existence of those tools so it’s a good idea to consider if making such things makes the world better or worse.
1. Decentralized
2. Anonymous
3. Trustworthy
4. Immune (from bad actors)
History has shown that these values are incompatible. Not a little incompatible - completely incompatible. We only have three decks of cards open to us:
1. Open and anonymous (and hopelessly corrupted by bad actors to the point of uselessness - phase 1 - Google only got popular in the first place because people couldn't dig through the manure)
2. Closed (held hostage by Big Tech curation - you are here - phase 2 - but corruption causes government intervention)
3. Open and accountable (identities tied to the real world, with real world accountability - incoming phase - but at least you don’t need to worry about DDoS as much)
There is no other option that works, any more than 1 + 1 + 1 = 4, no matter how badly we wish it existed.
So the government can neutralize every journalist, political opponent, whistleblower or whoever by whatever means are most effective in their particular jurisdiction (China- disappear, Russia- jail, US- arrests, lawsuits, firing).
We need better tools for filtering out the bad actors, not just throwing the baby out with the bath water and accepting totalitarian control from a handful of dictators and wannabe-dictators.
We've spent 30 years trying, and still haven't figured out. This is the mice all agreeing that they should put a bell on the cat, but they can't agree on how, because there's no actual way to accomplish that goal (and even if they did, there's always another cat, or an adult who takes off the bell). Saying "we're so close" or "we just need better tools" in 2025 is like saying "we've almost invented the perpetual motion machine, we just need to get rid of that last 2% of energy loss! It's just 2%!"
Everybody is focused on trying to make it work, but nobody sat down and thought: Is a system that is decentralized, anonymous, permissionless, censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving, bad-actor-resistant, misinformation-proof, CSAM-proof, all the mandatory requirements, and a place people want to be, even possible on paper? (It isn't. This is easily demonstrated by thinking even a little adversarially against all proposed solutions.)
Unusable hellscape of spam; centralized corporate walled gardens; or identity-verified government-level walled garden. We can only pick one. And the first option was already tried, fell flat on its face, and built Google (which curated the open web).
If we’re talking about representing the vector glyph of 4 with 3 popsicle sticks, this equation is true.
Arguing from human nature isn't compelling. Rape and murder are part of human nature as well, and people have always done both, yet it isn't controversial to police such behaviors. Racism is no different. We aren't mere animals entirely beholden to our base instincts, after all.
Zero people are harmed by this. The idea that this is more worthy of attention, than e.g. the creation of humiliating or pornographic images of real people is absurd.
I get that this is "whataboutism", but to be honest this seems to be such a petty and minor complaint that it feels absurd to even consider this a real problem.
And on a final note. These images are used to invoke a sense of guilt in prospective donors, so that people donate to charities. I agree that these images are distasteful and should not be shown, real or fake.
